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

Sunflower, sunflower growing tall

When I think of sunflowers, inexplicably, I think of my beloved older sister. I can only attribute it to my Mum baking and icing her an incredible (purple and orange) sunflower cake for her birthday when we were young. My Mum used to bake the most incredible cakes, but I'm sure you guessed that after seeing my wedding cake masterpiece she made (which you can see here in my wedding reception post).

As usual, I have digressed and rambled away from the main point. THAT being, that it was my sister's birthday 2 weeks ago and I wanted to make her a card and for that strange reason, the idea of a quilled sunflower came into my head.  I searched the shed for my quilling tool and some A4 brown and orange paper which I cut into strips using the manual papershredder.

I must recommend quilling, it really is a lovely form of card and paper crafting. Very therapeutic and you can sit and coil papers around the 2-pronged quilling fork whilst watching TV or chatting rather like one would knit.  You can use quilling sizing tools (basically looks like a stencil or different sized circles) to regulate the size of all your coils but I am lazy and just use my eye-judgement. It can also look very effective through the combination of a coils and not too much skill!  I also like to make up some generic coloured coils and keep them in and old pill pot in case I want to make a quick card.

The difference between the different coils in the card are that the brown ones are coiled and then glued (you stick a cocktail stick into your glue and dab over the end which secures to the coil) or the orange ones are coiled and then you release it and catch it/stop it when it has uncoiled/loosened to a size you want. Then you dab the glue on the cocktail stick again.

I cut a circle of brown paper in order to centre the sunflower and give it a background and then used a hexagonal formation or coils to ensure uniformity.  To make the orange petals, once you've made the loose coil and glued it, you pinch the ends between your fingers and I twisted the outward ones slightly.
It looked a bit bare so I stuck some of the strips and then punched a few butterflies from my wedding butterfly punch.

What do you think?

Linking to Creative Mondays
and Pink Elephant Challenge this week where Anything goes!

Can be constructed with office essentials

I was each week leading up to Valentines day, to create a series of posts with really simple, quick ideas for Valentines that anyone could make.  Last week, because I felt so awful I missed it, so I will try to do two this week.

Today's one is great if you suddenly have to make a last minute card and have no resources! You could make this in your office last minute as all the requirements can be found in your common stationery cupboad!  It is also quite a blokey card- great for the non-soppy fan of 80's computer graphics.
 All you need is:

• Hole punch
• White and coloured paper. In my first picture, you can see a brochure made of blue paper which I could easily cut up as well as the white paper and red offcuts- you only need a very little bit- A5 size or round the edge of junkmail will do!
• SMALL Pritt stick/White glue stick*
• Black card blank (or colour of your choice) 

I probably don't need to give instructions as this one is so easy! But anyway:
1.  Lay your card blank out flat (things will tip if you keep it folded)
2. Punch around.... [frantically scrutinizes own picture]...58 white circles with your trusty hole punch (I had a cute mini one-hole one but you can use the regular kind)and 52 coloured circles. (this will also depend on how you want to create your heart)
3. Start laying out the top and corner of your heart with the red/coloured circles, filling in the gaps with white until you have a heart surrounded by a square of white circles. Stick them close together..  You can leave it like this or surround with a coloured border round the edges.
4.  When happy with the formation, stick them down by applying glue to each dot. Alternatively, if lazy or time is short, just run the gluestick along the paper before you start and lay dots on top of it in a formation. Smooth down.
5.  Feel free to add a greeting.  I might well do this when mine are actually stuck down*.
Ta dah!


And there you have it- a simple Valentines- not too girly!


* Confession time here: I laid out all the of the circles and took picture as I went along.  When I lifted the glue-stick to glue them down, I discovered my pritt stick had dried up (and it was too cold to go into the shed for alternative adhesive) but I am out for the next 4 evenings and was keen to get this up, so I have had to leave this on the windowsill to be stuck down. Mean husband tried to blow on it!

Linking with Claire Justine's Creative Mondays



Linking to The Pink elephant challenge