My new tag die

It seems ages since I covered the whole of the front of a card with paper. I tried a bit of an experiment here, by stamping a strip of teal coloured card with Versamark and then clear embossing it, followed by rubbing over the embossed image with metallic rub on paste. I stamped the background piece with the same SU Bella Toile background stamp, this time using Weathered Wood Distress ink. I thought that this was a similar shade to the metallic paste, so giving a positive and negative effect.
I also rubbed the Spellbinder's fancy tag to give it a metallic sheen, but this doesn't show too clearly in this picture.
The sentiment is also from SU and cut with another Spellbinder's tag which I lengthened in order to accommodate the whole sentiment.
A little inking of the edges and a few pearls at the top and I was done!
Off to have my hair chopped this morning, it's much too long at the front so that will be a great relief... I have restrained myself from taking the scissors to it myself, for which I'm sure that the hairdresser will be eternally grateful!
Anything Goes - Use die cuts or punches.

Handbags

A local craft shop is relocating and had a few items on sale which they don't want to take to the new premises. This Create & Craft stamp was one such item. As I'm really rather fond of shoes and bags, my resistance level was comparable to a gnat and so here it is.

The challenge from My Time to Craft this week is Handbags, I suppose I could have included the little bag I made for One Stop Cards and Crafts' Challenge this week, but I wanted to try out my new stamp.

The paper is Cuddly Buddly, the image was coloured with Copics and the sentiment was made on the computer.

I bought some things from the craft shop in Bury St Edmunds at the weekend when visiting my son and daughter-in-law, so I fancy having a play with some of that lot too.

Watch this space!

More ways with Die cuts - Tutorial

Here is a card with fancy corners... except they're not corners, they're actually squares from the Spellbinders Fleur De Lis set.

This is how I set about changing them

I die-cut out the small square from a piece of white card.
Then I cut it in half diagonally.This leaves little bits sticking out which were part of the inner trellis.So I trimmed these off leaving a smooth line.Finally, I coloured it with a Promarker to match the layering on my card and added a little Glamour Dust before attaching it to the card.
The image is LOTV and all the diecuts are Spellbinders.

They look quite dramatic don't they!

Stamp Something - Fairy Tale Somethings!

Charisma Cardz - Die Cuts

Little Red Wagon - Make an altered item

WOYWW

Here is my desk this morning.

The observant among you will spot immediately that I have succumbed to peer pressure and now residing on my desk is the giant of a glue gun which I have been gazing at on many desks over the past weeks. When I heard that it was was on such a special offer at Viking, I thought I'd better get one before the offer ended, even though I have a drawer full of its baby cousins. I'm sure all will get used up in the end.

There are various remnants of cardmaking on the desk and one card in mid-make.

I have also given in to offers on Promarkers so now I have a choice... Copic or Pro... whichever colour seems right!

Here is my stock of Spellbinders and various other skinny dies, all neatly packed away in CD cases. I find this a really easy way to store them, with an albeit tatty label on the edge of the case letting me know where to find things.

Have a great day and do visit Julia (link on my sidebar) to take a look at what's going on on workdesks around the world!

A couple of challenges

On Saturday we left home at about 9.30am and headed for the Rose Bowl, to watch the finals of the T20 Cricket competition. Hampshire had reached the semi-final stage, but weren't really expected to get much further. They played the first match against Essex...and won and so went into the final. The weather could have been kinder, we had to get under the umbrella several times and the second match couldn't be completed because of rain. They have a complicated method entitled Duckwoth/Lewis for working out the winner in a situation like this, which gave Somerset the lead over Nottingham and so they became our opponents for the final match.

At about 11.15pm under the floodlights, the match ended with a tied score, but as we had lost one fewer wicket...we won! Wonderful! It was a very long day, and since then I've had a sore back and a stiff shoulder. Oh dear, what it is to be getting old! It was fun whilst it lasted.

Anyway here are a couple of cards I made today.

The first one is for Bah Humbug! Angels or Fairies!

Corrosive Challenge - Faux Techniques (stitching)

2 Sisters - Stitching (Faux)

Everybody Art- Check it out

Stamp Something - Fairy Tale Somethings

The image is Anita's and the sentiment, Hero Arts.

As you might image with one look at this card, it's for the sketch from the Clean & Simple Challenge.

The stamp is Unity and the sentiment Hero Arts, stamped with Stampin' Up Mellow Moss ink.

Commission Cards

As we were driving to our daughter's in Bath yesterday, I received a phone call requesting a couple of cards. The lady was most specific about what she wanted on the cards and so it was a good job that I had some paper and a pencil to hand to jot everything down.

The first one was for an anniversary and she wanted

a) the couple's names

b) the date

c) the fact it was 20years

d) a mention of it being the 'China' anniversary and

e) she wanted a bride and groom silhouette.

She also wanted a money gift wallet to match.

The second card was for a lady who was retiring from work in a bakery and once more the information was quite precise.

She wanted

a) the lady's name

b) Happy Retirement

c) the date she retired

d) the fact that she had done 25 years service and the date when that occurred

She also wanted a money gift wallet for this person too.

I spent the morning doing these two projects, I only hope they will be satisfactory.

I'm entering them for a couple of challenges.

Charisma Cardz - Easel Card

Alphabet Challenge - P- Punches

One layer card

Over at No Time to Stamp the challenge is to make a card using only the card itself... no additional papers. Embellishments may be added, but that's all.

I began by de-bossing the front of the card with a Nestie rectangle and then I stamped the image from a Prima Marketing clear stamp into the space.

The ribbon treatment is two ribbons, both of which began life white, but I coloured the narrower stripy one with a Copic marker to make it black.

I started to heat emboss thePapermania 'make your own brad' with black embossing powder, but it looked dreadful, so I reheated it and wiped the black off. In fact it left a slightly aged look which I prefer to either the plain silver or the black embossing.

This is another candidate for Really Reasonable Ribbons' Black and White challenge too!

Boxed Wedding Card

My friend asked me to make a card for her daughter's upcoming wedding. She had seen the Silver wedding card which I made recently and asked for something similar in ivory with burgundy accents.

This is what I came up with. It includes the couple's names and the date of the wedding.You can see the beginnings of the construction process here on WOYWW. It's just the post beneath this one.

I twinkled the burgundy paper with Spray & Sparkle, before punching and die-cutting.

The embossing is with a Cuttlebug Hearts folder and the punching is Woodware and Nellie Snellen.

As the bow and the embellishments made the card rather fat, I made a box for it too which I decorated with a small version of the heart, together with the couple's initials.

I'm entering it into the Wild Wedding Challenge at Just Us Girls and the Wedding or Anniversary Challenge at Crafty Creations.

I hope they have a wonderful day!

Shaped Easel Card

I couldn't seem to get a decent picture of this project, so I'm afraid I gave up trying. I hope you can see it clearly enough!

Over at Crafty Ann's Challenge Blog, the challenge is to make a shaped easel card. I made this Silver Wedding card for some of my friends, from some other of my friends. I've yet to make my own card for them.

The shaped part is made from Nesties, and by the time I had finished decorating the card, I realised that it was too fat for an envelope, so I had to make a box, which I embellished with a heart shaped monogram.

The embossing is with a tiny hearts Cuttlebug folder, the corners are also Cuttlebug (Vintage) and the flower was made with a variety of punches.

Over at the Shabby Tearooms the challenge this week is 'Let's make an impression', and Creative Card Crew's challenge is 'Diecuts' so this is for those challenges too!

I typed the sentiment on the computer.

I hope they like it!

Wedding Greeting

This card is for the lady whose wedding stationery I have just completed. You can see it here. I decided to use the same shape for the central panel as I had used on her invitations, but to keep it in ivory instead of adding the red accent that I had used on her design.

Despite what I said in my post the other day about check and double check details for stationery, I still had a phone call from the bride to say that I had put an 's' instead of an 'f' in the word 'of' in the menus. The number of times I had thought that I had checked it!! I should have enlisted the help of my resident proof reader... my husband. When I came to look really closely at the menu, I spotted that I had in fact also missed out one of the 'e's in chees(e)cake and that I had copied a mistake from the bride's notes where one type of melon had been spelled incorrectly. Between us we did rather well, but as they say that things tend to go in threes, so hopefully that will be the end of it!

In all other respects, she was pleased.

This card is for a couple of challenges

Paperplay - Weddings

The Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge - No patterned paper

Check and DOUBLE check!

It always pays to check things thoroughly!

The bride came to collect the remainder of her wedding stationery and was thrilled with what she saw.

I asked her to check everything carefully before she took the stuff away as I had noticed, only a short while before she arrived, that I had given one person the wrong first name! (David instead of Daniel), so I sorted that out sharpish.

However, when she was checking through, she spotted that there was a couple whose surname was mis-spelt. My husband had proof read through all that I had printed and found everything to be correct. So I went back to the sheet she had given me for the table plan and discovered that as she had photocopied it, the last letter from a couple of the names had been missed off the edge of the sheet by the photocopier. I probably should have checked it against an earlier list she had given me, but I was taking the latest info as definitive!

It was rapidly changed, and so all's well that ends well!

I hope they have a lovely day!

How I spent my Sunday!

I've another wedding commission to complete for the 30th of this month.

The invitations (the card back left) were naturally completed some time ago, but the bride let me have back, a few that were left over. I converted these into 'Thank you' cards for her, by removing the central motif and adding a new heart and the Cuttlebug die cut Thank you. How's that for recycling?

The little ribbon wrapped stack of cards (there are 65 of them) are seat names for the actual ceremony. The bride made a special request for these, as she wanted her ushers to be able to direct guests to their places without kerfuffle.

The tall card is one of the menus, and the cards at the front are some the table numbers. The 65 placecards are blank, ready for the bride to add the guests' names in her beautiful calligraphy.

My poor little Cuttlebug was doing overtime yesterday... all that die-cutting and embossing! My neck was sore after I had finished too.

So all that remains to be done is the inserts of the menus and the Table Plan.

That will be my sixth set of Wedding Stationery done and dusted!

Variation on a theme

A friend saw a wedding card which I had made recently and requested a similar one, personalised and with colours to match the theme of the wedding.

Totally Papercrafts has the theme of weddings or anniversaries this week so this is for that challenge.

Ooh la la Challenge has a minimalist theme this week where there must be white space. I don't know about the space, but there's plenty of white!

There is lots of die-cutting and embossing with a computer generated sentiment. The burgundy of the flowers doesn't show too clearly beneath the Glamour Dust!

Card for a little one!

A friend from my gym club (not that I've been for months) rang to ask me to make a card for her Great Niece. She hasn't any children of her own but is very close to her nephew. His daughter is very like a grandchild to her, but she really wanted to have the correct relationship on the card. Needless to say, she couldn't find anything in the shops.

It is for the Quixotic Challenge - Babies.

The image is Meljen designs and the paper is Cuddly Buddly. I made the name and the sentiment on the computer

I hope Chloe likes it!

Love is in the air! & OSCC DT call

Just recently I have had requests for 5 wedding cards... love certainly is in the air.

It began with this one for a friend from my choir, whose son is getting married as you can see on June 11th. Having the date on the card was a special request.

Next was the wedding which I myself attended last weekend. I didn't manage to take a picture of that card as I finished it practically as we were walking out of the door to leave for the wedding. It was a similar design to this one, but was in ivory and had a Mr & Mrs stamp in the corner instead of names or initials.

This one and the following one are for a friend to give to some of her fellow teachers. This one utilises the letterpress technique with an Impressabilities stencil. I dabbed it with silver ink before embossing. I love the effect it makes.The very last one was made following an emergency call last night from a friend from the gym, who will be attending a wedding this evening!It uses the same Impressabilities stencil , but this time without ink as I used a lovely pearlescent paper.

So instead of just one DT card for One Stop Craft's Wedding card challenge this week, here we have 4!

Charisma Cardz and C.R.A.F.T. also have wedding themes this week. SO these are for them too!
I have been in Bath babysitting for a couple of days, hence the lack of blogging or crafting. My daughter is setting up her own HR Consultancy business and is quite busy at the moment and so requires the services of Granny!

Shelley has decided to increase the size of the DT at OSCC, so head over to the blog for details!

Another request

Here is another card for a choir member. I have made anniversary cards for her son and daughter-in-law for a few years now and I have to remember what I have done so as not to repeat myself!

This is the classic white on white, with lots of die-cutting and embossing. I like this colour choice for engagements, weddings and anniversaries.

The punched flowers are liberally twinkled with Glamour Dust and embellished with tiny adhesive pearls. The die-cutting is Spellbinders and the embossing is Cuttlebug.

It's for a few challenges too.

The Shabby Tea Room - 'Get your bling on' - Glitter

Dutch Dare - Easel card + Repeat something... the flowers either side of the heart

Daring Cardmakers - Easel Card - option for a shape other than square... this is getting there!

Stamping Vacation Pick 3 - I chose 1) Make an Easel card 2) Do not use anything round on your creation 3) Use pearls on your creation

I was lucky enough to be chosen in the Top 3 last month! Toot toot!

I most probably should have photographed it on a colour other than white, I hope you can see it!

Great Wedding Day

Yesterday was the wedding of my son's friend, for whom I made all the stationery as our wedding gift to the couple.

This was my DT contribution to the challenge of 'Anything but a card' at One Stop Cards and Crafts this week. Do come and join in the fun!

As a little surprise, I made a couple of boxes for the bride and groom which I filled with sweeties and popped beside their namecards on the top table.

Here you can see some of the favour tags, the menu and what the table numbers looked like!As you can see this was the table plan.
We all had a fabulous time and my son's speech as Best Man, which he'd been really worried about, went down really well!
SO ALL good!This is a piccy of my husband and I at the wedding.

Black & White

I have been fiddling around with this card all evening, numerous sheets of variously folded paper are in the bin, but at last a card has emerged.

I watched a video on You Tube, on which I based this project, but I think that the lady in question was a little more adept than I am.

It is for several challenges.

Crafty Catz - fancy Edge & Ribbon (the centre has fancy edges)

Creative Inspirations - Monochrome

Little Red Wagon - Black & White

Crafty Ann - New Technique

Dutch Dare - Gate Fold

It is, in fact a kind of glorified Gate Fold card. It opens in a similar manner, but has the flap at the top which tucks into one of the squares at the edge of the front fold. I decided to add a ribbon, which wraps around the folded card, but slips behind the motif on the front through two ribbon slits. The base paper is from Clare Curd's Signature Range and the the white die-cuts are Spellbinders Fleur de Lis Pendant. The sentiment is from Stampin'Up.
It's time for bed I think 11:40pm!

Another Slider Card

Yesterday I was watching a video about making Slider cards and today I watched another and this is the result.

I used the sketch from CPS #155 which I rotated through 90 degrees.

It's just plain pearly paper which in places I reinforced with plain card. The background is embossed with a Cuttlebug folder and the smaller rectangle is printed with a French Script background stamp from Stampin' Up. So this is also for the embossing challenge from Sophisticats.

I searched all over the place for the pearlised paper and eventually resorted to lying on the floor with a torch looking under the bed, which is where I found the box of paper... Hurrah! There was so little space under there that I had to get a ruler to fish it out!

The image is from Unity Stamps, which I printed once in Stazon and then a second time, without re-inking, to get the shadow effect.

The clever part of this, is the way in which it looks as though the ribbon goes right across the card, which would probably make the slide impossible, but it's a cute method and you can see the video I watched here.

The birds' section is mounted on dimensional pads to give a little space for the ribbon behind it and as such qualifies for the challenge at Crafty Creations where the theme is 'Cut it out and pop it up!'

The sentiment on the slide is from Stampin' Up.

The bit I got wrong again today, was in not shortening the card slightly to allow for the knot in the ribbon at the side. I shall probably have to make a special envelope now to compensate!

You know how sometimes you're just pleased with a card you've made... well this is one of them!

I hope you like it too!

All the Cs... Charisma Cardz & Our Creative Corner!

I loved making this card.

I love embossing.

I love White on White. (Charisma Cardz)

I love the sketch. (Our Creative Corner)

Nesties Diecutting & Cuttlebug embossing! Simples!