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

A Valentines Day card

Here's the quick card I made for CBC this year.

It was about 11.30pm last night when I remembered what the date was and headed into the Garage to my craft shelves to see if anyone captured my attention.

A lilac card caught my eye and then some red corrugated card.  I rooted around for my heart-punch and then spotted a Persephone Books bookmark and some outline sticks.  With the aid of some double-sided tape that this became the card above. 

Simple and quick and can also be used as a bookmark!

Did you make a card?

Do share if so!

x

6 ice-creams- 5 envelopes.

I mentioned, in my Summer plans, that I wanted to make some cards this Summer as I haven't done for ages. One of my greatest holiday joys is being able to make a big crafty mess and getting some hand-made cards prepared.

Sometimes, I don't have a specific idea in mind and I start off with some type of material.

In this case, I opened all the cards from the kids at school and was left with a pile of envelopes, some of which were some rather nice colours.  It always seems a shame to chuck them straight into the recycling despite the fact I have a heaving craft stash.  I feel that I owe it to the pretty coloured envelopes to try and use them somehow.  

So, below, I made the two cards out of 5 different coloured envelopes I received.

These are incredibly easy to make and the only TOOLS I used for these (aside from those the standard layman might have like scissors and glue) were a circle punch and a set of alphabet punches.

The cones were made from a brown textured envelope and the letters and ice-cream boules themselves were made by punching circles from a pink, white, cream and  yellow envelope (plus some dark brown paper I have). You just need 5 identical circles (which you could cut by hand if you lacked a punch).

You just fold them in half and blue a half circle to another one 5 times and then fan them out and glue down onto the cone.

The sprinkles were just made by hand.

 I will be going over those rather uneven silver dots at the top and the bottom with a silver outline strip sticker to neaten up my poor drawing-skills! That serves me right for being lazy and doing it freehand rather than measuring.

What do you think? 

Do these designs work?  Would you fancy an ice-cream card?

x

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

Scrap card challenge

Last week, I shared a post with two cards made entirely out of scrap materials. I like the challenge of this so I thought that I would give myself another Scrap challenge where I tried to make a few different cards using the same scrap materials in each one but also incorporating other materials as necessary

The scrap involved in this challenge was:

A mint base card which was the back of a card someone sent to me.

A pink envelope written to me

A Purple envelope written to me.

A piece of pale pink card which a work college cut two templates from and then put into the recycling bin.

And here are the three cards I made.

I ended up punching a whole load of flowers from the pink and purple scrap so I used these on all 3 cards.  In the top right card- I layered two on top of each other whereas the other two just used a single flower each time.

The floral centres on the left two were drawn on in silver gel pen whereas the right one had pink mirrored punched centres.

The only materials used that weren't scrap were the black card, the pink mirrored elements and the silver outline stickers on the bottom one.

I'm not going to teach Grandma to suck eggs by explaining how I made each one as you are all intelligent enough to work it out for yourselves but if you do have any enquiries, just leave me a comment and I will do my best to answer it.

What do you reckon?

xx

P.S.  I'd love to see you take part in a Scrap card challenge!

Linking with Claire Justine at Creative Mondays.

Fashion from scraps

I do love a bit of recycling or reusing!  Especially when it comes to card making.  With the best will in the world, no one can really keep all the cards that they are given on the numerous celebratory or grateful occasions in their life and often a card will go into the bin (I HOPE, recycling rather than bin!) so therefore I rather feel wasteful using too many brand new, or indeed too many elements on the cards that I make for people.  Obviously, some very special ones are kept by individuals though.

Anyway, my challenge last Sunday was to make a card completely out of scrap material with the exception of an adhesive.

 And here, we have two!

I tend to have an eagle eye for materials that will have a second lease of life possibility so I do tend to squirrel them away within reason.

The materials this card used included:

• An old Calendar for the white base card
• A piece of patterned writing paper sent with a Depop purchase.
• An old pink envelope.

The tools I used included:

• Pritt stick
• X-cut guillotine
• Woodcraft large dress punch (actually belongs to my sister. I 'borrowed' it for a card a while ago and neglected to return it! Must do!)
• Hobbycraft flower border punch.
• Woodcraft mini handbag punch.

The pictures above show 

1.  The raw materials including the calendar post punching.  I know the inside has a calendar background but I don't think that really matters, do you?

2.  The dress punch with one of the punched dresses.

3.  The flower punch with its work.

4.  Cunningly, I positioned the dress over the name on the envelope so you wouldn't know it was an envelope front!

And the materials ended up making 2 cards.

And all that from scrap, even the base card.

What do you think?  Could I challenge you to make a card entirely out of scrap?  Obviously, the punches help but if your cutting skills are less rudimentary than mine, I am sure you could do this without the need for tools!

xx

Linking to Claire Justine's Creative Mondays.

Cards for men- more ideas

I almost gave my sister a heart attack when I presented her with birthday and Father's day cards back at the start of April to give to my Dad and Step-Grandad. I'm not always known for my being on time with birthday cards for that part of my family given that they rely on the posting of items. However, I was determined that they would be presented.  June is a busy time for birthdays.

Here is a card for my Dad's 66th birthday. He has always been very fond of boats, having been a leisure sailor with his own boats when I was young. 

I decided to create a 3d boat using a sort of 3d decoupage technique.

Every aspect of this card is recycled.  The sky consisted of torn envelope inards, the brown textured boat bowels were made out of a posh music programme.  The deep blue sea came from some scrap card from 10 years ago. At that time, I filed my pieces of scrap paper according to colour!

As you can see, the boat consists of several layers to make it 'pop' from the card.  3d sticky pads from Poundland give it the gaps between levels. If you can cut geometric shapes with a pair of scissors and use pinking scissors, then this card is a doddle.

 This card was made of off cuts and as you can probably tell from the card base itself, it was also something else in its previous life! I used a Martha Stewart edging punch to make the swirly patterns and layered onto some scrap blue card from above with some stickers that have been lurking in my collection since the very first time I bought the Do Craft magazine- a magazine freebie!

Here's a sneaky tip for you.  You know you can buy those metallic outline stickers from Craft shops.  Well, when you pull off the stickers, you are left with the cut outs from these shapes and you can peel them off and use them for cards too. These were what was left from using the original stickers. That way, you get double for your money! This card was for my relative who is a real handy man!

Any ideas to inspire you here?  Hope that you might gain some ideas from me!

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

A few April cards

The first week of my Easter holidays were spent at home in Essex with a brief trip to Kent to see my Dad, Stepmum and sister. Thus, the first week was the perfect time to make 20 cards. Yes, you read that right! 20! My little sister almost died of shock when I turned up to theirs and handed her birthday cards for my Dad and my Stepmum's Dad AND for Father's Day plus my Dad's wrapped presents. (all the above events are in June! I figured I'd save on postage and my general malaise at posting!) I also gave HER card to my Stepmum!

Want to see SOME of what I made?

Of course you do!  I'll ration them to a few at a time, so you don't get too bored (and also have more crafty posts to share anon).

Up first, my big sister turned 40! 

This one was made using the same flower punches, gems and metallic card  as my Mothers' day card. The only difference was the addition of glittery number stickers, a square shape and a green pen to make linking foliage.

I really HATE Blogger sometimes. WHY has it turned this card sideways! That's NOT the way it was orientated but I can't seem to change it.
Anyway, turn you head to the side to view.  This was for my Penpal Katie (the blogger formally known as Hook, Line and Sink her) and made use of stickers and adhesive gems!

I also made a Thank you card for another penpal Lucy (the blogger formerly known as Books and Brooches. I wish these girls would still blog!).  She sent me some beautiful belated birthday presents and I wanted to send her a card alongside her recent letter!

Any ideas here that you might use?

Do let me know if you do use them!

xx

A versatile card idea

Hello there!

It's been a while since I shared a craft post, mainly because I have been busy doing other activities and have not made anything.  I actually have been crafting up a storm in the past 2 days, having made about 10 cards which I will share in due course (as some of the recipients read this blog) so I thought I'd share my Mother's day card which Mum has now received so I can share it!

I have repeated this many times but if I could advise you of one versatile craft tool to buy, I would say, buy a flower punch.  I have a few in various flower and size options but any will do.  

My flower punches have been utilised on so many occasions in different combinations.

Here, I used 2 punches- one is a basic flower punch and the other is a tiny daisy border punch.

 The benefit of this card design that I came up with for Mum is that anything could go in the centre of the heart: Mum, Dad, A lovely couple, Gran, Sister, Thank you, On your Christening, On your confirmation, Love, Valentines, Bob...

 To make this heart-shaped design, you will need:

• Tiny flower punch (mine came from The Range.)
• White card base.
• Metallic card in turquoise or colour of your choice (mine was from a Stationery shop I've forgotten the name of.
• Tiny self adhesive gems (mine came from Poundland for a pack of 504)
• Flower edge punch (Fiskars do some good ones)
• Black fineliner
• Silver gel pen.
• Prittstick.

• First, fold and cut your card to size.

• Secondly, use your border punch along the long outside edge to make a border.
• Next,   punch a set of turquoise flowers and then arranged them on the table until you have a shape you like.  
• After, glue them using prittstick onto your card front, making sure you evenly space the heart from all four edges. (you can use PVA, I just prefer to avoid if I can)
• Following that, select and carefully snip the gems for the flower centres (I chose to alternate lilac and silver) from the plastic sheet and position onto the centre of each flower (watch out, sometimes, some of them don't stick properly. I had to reposition one of two with Prittstick- PVA would be better for this...)
• Then, fill in the gaps between the flowers with green gems.
• Lastly, find a font style you like on the internet and  copy it, drawing it lightly in pencil onto the centre of the heart (I practised on a piece of scrap paper first).
• Go over the pencil in black pen and then edge it in silver.
• Finito!

As I said, this design can be utilised for many occasions and you really don't have to be skilled to do this.  You don't even need the border punch if you really want. 

I will show another design in a week or so I did which used the same elements for this but in a different way for a different occasion.

Have I inspired you?  Would you give this a go?

Do share if you do!

xx

Super easy, eco-friendly Valentines Cards ideas

Hi there,

Just in case you have left it too late to buy a card or you fancy making your own, I thought I'd link to a few previous posts of mine in which I have shared simple ways to make cards:

 6 easy peasy Valentines cards you can make yourself

This Dot to dot post card was one of the 6 ideas I suggested in the post above.  This one, as you can see, is ridiculously easy to make.

Dot to Dot

Envelope hearts

As part of a Heart swap back in 2012, I made a box of heart cards for Tracy, my partner and this is a design I have made numerous times for engagement cards which uses recycled envelope inards in contrasting patterns. It could work well for Valentines too!

Heart swap post

The card below was the card I made for Tracy to accompany the gift, but I don't see why this couldn't work as a simple Valentines card. I used the heart stickers I had used as masks to paint her a heart mug, as they were still sticky, rather than chucking them away.

Just add stickers...

Citrus hearts

These card are not Valentines cards as such but since they contain hearts, they could be a nice non-soppy idea for someone in your life!

Hearty drink 

A slice of my heart

Ribbon hearts idea

If you click the link in the caption, you can see how I made this card by utilising those annoying ribbons in clothing that are for hangers but stick out of jumpers and dresses annoyingly.

Ribbons from clothing card

Buttons:
 Buttons can act like Mosaic pieces and I love a good mosaic! All the below were a case of arranging and sticking with PVA glue or sticky tape! If you save those buttons from clothing but never seem to use them, now is your time!

Button heart idea

The wedding card that could be a Valentines.

Rainbow buttons

Yet another button card... The background blue is from a Tissue box!

Office Essentials holepunch card

I had sooo much traffic to this Valentines idea post a few years ago, I think it was because it said the phrase, Office Essentials in it! Anyway, this one is another very non-soppy idea and rather like the buttons is a form of mosaic but with hole-punched pieces from some paper that was going into the recycling.

Holepunch valentines

Origami hearts:
 If you look for a You tube tutorial, this is where I got this idea from for Origami hearts. These ones were made out of old envelopes! I am TERRIBLE at Origami but I found these super easy and I even managed to get one of the girls in the office to make one for her boyfriend by showing her how.

Origami hearts

Scrap card mosaic:

Most of the card in this mosaic for my husband came from tissue boxes, junk mail or other packaging except for the holographic one- have a look and see what packaging can be used!

And finally, here is yet another mosaic card idea,but this was the first Valentines my now-husband made for me back in 2010, so it's not just me who likes to give the crafty idea a go!!!! If I can find any of his other ones, I will post them..

Do you have any Valentines cards ideas? Do share if so and let me know if you use any of these!

Much love,

Kezzie xx

Linking up with Creative Mondays at Claire Justine's! So long since I last linked up!

Musical Flowers

In a bid to keep things varied here, I thought I'd share a recent card I made.  I mentioned the Choir concert I took part in on Saturday.  It went extremely well and was greatly enjoyable.  

A collection for flowers for Pam, our conductor was made and I offered to make a card to accompany it. I knew I wanted to make use of music notation but could I find any anywhere??? Nope!

So I had to cut up a piece of music I wasn't supposed to!

My beloved X-cut flower punch made another appearance alongside some darling lavender-coloured buttons I got in a job lot from a charity shop 10 years ago when I was making puppets with my year 2's on my PGCE placement. I must have been given about 1000 buttons for about £2! I've shared them out with people over the years but still have a fair few!

The outline stickers and Martha Stewart punch added some detail with some little adhesive gems from the Works.

If you want to create an embossed effect on card, you just need a bit of funky foam and an embossing stylus. I just drew these spirals free-hand.

The card needed stiffening up so I added a piece of lilac card underneath. This was recycled from an Export License for a violin when I used to work at the Academy. Each one would come with a lilac piece of backing-card so I used to carefully take the backing off!!

I am pleased to say she really liked the card!

Hurrah!

Have you made any cards recently?

Linking to Claire Justine's Creative Mondays!

x