Kitties!!!

Good Evening!

No TARDIS Tuesday today as I had a very busy weekend and forgot to sort anything.  

It was my lovely niece's 15th birthday and we were due to meet her.

It was about 12pm and I hadn't made her a card but I had an idea based on one I saw on Instagram.

Here is the finished card:

I made two little kitty templates from cardboard and then I gathered some used envelopes from the recycling bin.  I used it to quickly cut out the kitty shapes.  I ended up needing one more pattern and I saw the front of CBC's Amnesty International Magazine which had a blue floral pattern.

I laid the kitties in three rows and then went to look for my gluestick which was almost completely empty and falling out the tube so I used it sparingly, sticking them down with only their ends attached and their heads loose.  This ended up working well as they look more 3D with their heads loose.

At that point, we had to leave for K's birthday but I hadn't finished the card so I had to draw on the kitty faces and whiskers plus the Happy Birthday greeting as we drove! It looks a bit wiggly but I am really pleased with it!

Below, is the original card I was inspired by!

 

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A post shared by Katharina Tarta Crafts (@katharina_tarta_crafts)

We travelled to Southend to a Cat Cafe called Kittea Cakes Cat Cafe.

They serve fairly simple food and drinks - sandwiches, toasties, jacket potatoes and various drinks.

When we arrived, one of those hairless cats, called Noodles, had jumped up onto a recently vacated table and started drinking someone's left over milkshake.

There were lots of hidey places and peaceful zones where the cats could escape to. If the cats are asleep, you need to leave them alone and not pick them up but you can stroke them and they can come and sit on your lap.  The staff gave some treats for us to give to the cats (I didn't take any).

Everyone else stroked some cats. I stroked one but didn't really go up to many cats.

And then...

A lovely cat called Pumpkin decided, 

I WAS ITS PLACE TO SLEEP!

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A post shared by Kezzie (@kezziesquirrel)

Pumpkin got super comfy and really relaxed after a while.  K and CBC and everyone else looked on enviously as I kitty purred away and slept!

Sadly, it was all to soon time to go.

We headed back to my sister's house for cakes and pressies.   K was very pleased with my pressies.

I had had a concert at Chelmsford Cathedral the day before (SIX HOURS OF WAITING BETWEEN MY REHEARSAL ENDING AND MY MOMENT IN THE CONCERT!!!!) and as soon as I got out of the rehearsal, I headed to the shopping centre in Chelmsford and managed to get 2 beauty products she wanted for cheaper by picking up a Superdrug beauty card. Then, to my delight, the Nike Pro leggings she wanted, were £10 of in JD sports that day so I got those.  I also bought her a Super dry starry top from the charity shop and a couple of other bits.

I then headed to Oxfam books where the music section had had some amazing donations- I got some great choral music and some piano duet books for CBC for Christmas plus 2 great children's books.

I then headed to Hotel Chocolat where I ordered a Dark mint hot chocolate with chocolate whipped cream.  As I used my own cup, they gave me a £1 discount. It was delicious!

I headed to Banana Tree for dinner where I was joined by 2 violinists, one of whom is on the committee of my main orchestra. It was really nice to get to know her a bit better.  She is also a charity shop lover and we had gone to Oxfam together. We had a fun dinner and then headed to the cathedral.

It was a beautiful concert but I got home very, very late, considering I was only playing for a short part of the concert with my first note around 9.15pm.   I had about 800 bars rest.

Our Friday night was also busy as we went to see a wonderful vocal quintet called Apollo Five in Southend Plaza centre!  Sunday night was also busy as we went to see a classical guitarist at the Oslo in Hackney Central called Rosie Bennett.

Twas a great social weekend!x

Birthday cards

Hello there!

Before I write any more, could you please go and sign this petition ohttps://www.change.org/p/grant-shapps-uk-secretary-of-state-for-transport-stop-skywriting-adverts-over-britain

to stop advertising in the sky being legal in the UK- the government pushed this through in March. Please sign.

It's been a while since I shared some cards on here.

I suddenly realise that I didn't share the cards I made in the Easter holidays.  Maybe I will share those soon.

It was my Dad and my Step-Mum's Dad's birthdays in June (as well as my sister's which I shared a while back) and so I made them some cards on the day before we went to see them.

The first card was fairly simple, featuring different sized stars mounted on 3D sticky pads which came in a large pack from Poundland a while back. I've used these for quite a few cards in the last few years- see here. I thought it worked well as a Man's birthday card!

For my Dad's birthday card, I wanted to make him something with a Chemistry theme.  My Dad is a Chemistry graduate and he part of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Energy group.

I looked at the periodic table to see which elements could spell out words.

Alas, Happy Birthday was not possible from the Elements available, nor was Celebration or a few other things I tried.  

Eventually, I realised I could spell his surname and Genius (which I'd seen on a Chemistry mug!) 

Using the colours I found on an online periodic table, I punched squares from card and carefully wrote the element codes/names and atomic numbers.

To finish it off, I added 2 thin silver outline stickers!

My Dad was super pleased with it!

What do you think?

xx

Two simple floral cards

Before I write about these cards, I should write a simple caveat- they are easy to make but are a little time consuming!

Remember my target to make 10 cards- well I am up to 6 I think!

The aforementioned envelopes are the materials used for these cards- I got my full-worth out of those!

A floral punch is the ultimate crafting essential for my card style- I have used these workhorses prolifically over the years. I have 4 sizes.

The large flowers here are formed by overlapping 3 of each colour flowers and then I used an old biro on a piece of foam to rub over the petals to make them curl and stand out.  Glue and some poundland gems for the centre. I prefer to leave my cards without a greeting in order to maximise their versatility if they are not made with a particular individual in mind.

The base card of this was scrap- from a sample card set. The flowers are punched from a smaller punch - arranging and sticking them was what took so long.  The centres are from a silver Sharpie pen.

Card-making is for even the most self-confessed inartistic individual- you just have to be able to stick and punch shapes at the most basic level.  Why not give it a go?
xx

24 carrot card!

I am wondering if I have beat some record for myself in making a card for a birthday in advance?  It is my Dad's birthday in the latter-half of June and I decided to make a start on his next year's card in July!  This is mainly because I was addressing my target to make 10 cards in the holidays and was perusing pages of my ancient craft mags and found this idea I quite liked.

 I should point out at this stage, that this card also makes use of some of the other envelopes that I received cards in from kids at school. I like a bit of recycling!

The idea for this card came from Papercraft Inspirations.

It also took AGES and was incredibly fiddly.

You have to make yourself 24 orange triangles and 24 green triangles the latter of which then need to be fringed.  That alone took an age without counting the time to stick every carrot down individually (PVA with a cotton bud FYI).  Then you have the individual letters for the caption and then the sticking down of a layer of green and brown.

Is it any wonder I decided just to draw the fork in with a silver Sharpie pen instead of cutting one out out of silver card.

This requires no tools other than a corner-rounder punch and the alphabet punch. 

I HOPE it looks good. Was it worth the effort?  I guess I have until next June to find out!

xx

A simple Father's Day card idea

It seems an age since I made any cards or shared a crafty post on here.  Despite having all my craft materials in one place (most of it has been sitting in my friend Nath's garage for 2 years), I have somehow failed to make many cards.

I thought I'd share a simple idea I made for my Dad's Father's day card.

It took me about 10 minutes to make.

There are some versatile materials that you need for a simple card. Patterned papers are a brilliant one because you can use them in a myriad ways and they look good instantly. 

Alphabet stickers and outline stickers are also incredibly useful.

This sheet of 'family' paper came in a pad that had 50 sheets of 15cm by 15cm papers and was very inexpensive.  I thought it was very cheerful!  

it was a simple matter of cutting it to size on my guillotine and then attaching with pritt stick and then going over the join with outline stickers and adding these flocked letters.

Little cost, little time, but hopefully still showing an effort.

And here was my Dad on his birthday which frequently coincides with father's day.
It was delightful that we were able to join him on his birthday for the day. We had a lovely barbecue and I had my first experience of cooking on a one as he was struggling with juggling two barbecues.
Joyfully, I also spent last weekend with him and my Stepmum and sister as CBC was away in the Southdowns with school so I travelled there after a Friday night concert with Flautista and stayed till Sunday.

Made any cards recently?  Do you get to spend much time with with your Dad?

xx

Easy card ideas- Using stickers for cards

Hello there,

I hope you are well. I have had a good, albeit draining day of 3 back to back Beginner recorder teaching lessons, Tudor Dance and Singing Assembly. All being done with a very intense headache. It has started to abate a bit as I have reached home and relaxed a bit more.

I have some very simple (and not, if I am to be honest, good) card ideas to share today.  I had this pack of Farmyard animal stickers that seemed to be losing their stickiness. I decided to try and resurrect them for some simple card ideas.

The above one is definitely not finished, it looks decidedly dodgy, but I thought it might be nice to add some ferns in the background.

This one is slightly better, perhaps because the sticker is a bit more prominent.  If you wanted to make some cards with kiddies, you could use this idea- get them to draw some grass round the edges and stick stickers in the centre.

Have a nice day!

xx

Greeetings card - recycling one element from another card

Just a quick post for you today! I often find it hard to throw away cards I've been given because they are pretty and it feels wasteful.  However, I would live in even more chaos and mess than I do anyway if I didn't dispose of things so I do get rid of cards. But, if I think an element of a card can be recycled into something else, then the legacy of that card lives on.

I was given a simple card with this pretty Hello speechbubble in the middle of it. So I cut it out and layered it with 3d sticky pads onto a mint green card base.  I rounded the corners with a Corner punch. Next, I punched some gold sunbursts using a tiny craft  punch and layered those onto tiny 3 d pads. To finish off, if you look closely, you can see I drew tiny white dots using a white watercolour pencil.

And voila, some lucky recipient will receive an element of the original card but with my own spin!

What do you think? Is this a good way to reuse a card or do you think it's not a good thing to do?

Answers on a postcard!

xxx

Yet more card ideas

Remember my last craft post where I alluded to the making of 20 cards during the April holidays?  Here's the next lot for your delectation, approval, delight and liberal freedom to pinch ideas!

The following cards have all been given to the recipients so they are all 'safe' to view!

 This first one was a birthday card for CBC.  I got the idea from a picture frame my friend Lara (from Lara's Cottage Crafts on Facebook) made for a baby's room.  The basic idea for this was I punched circles in red, orange, yellow and blue- halved them and glued them side to side. Then attach to the card and draw little baskets underneath.  The clouds were merely cut freehand from white paper and the birds drawn on in black fineliner.  This is probably the card I am most proud of out of these!

The next one was for my Mum's husband.  He's a big fan of lots of band music so I made him this out of some outline stickers with the blue ones being the stickers simply stuck onto some blue card offcuts.

The third was for my Sister-in-law.  She played the French horn when she was younger and we bought her a French-horn print skirt from Lindybop for her birthday (along with a crocheted monkey by Lara).  This was the same set of outline stickers and I simple mounted them onto squares of coloured card which I cut with scalloped-edged scissors.  I smile at the lilac card because I used to have to apply for Export licenses for instruments when I worked at the Royal Academy of music and the lilac card was the backing card from the export licenses which I used to carefully peel off and I stashed them!

The final one was a simple use of two different flower punches with coloured card. I think the thing that made this card was using a white gel pen to carefully draw the dotted lines in between. I'm not sure it would have looked particularly effective without them.

What do you think? Are there any ideas you feel like attempting? Any favourites?

xx