Violin

 Here's a card I made for our friend's 90th birthday.

We went to our music camp to celebrate with her. The celebrations included chamber music, an orchestra session, drinks and nibbles and a 3 course dinner.

We arrived around 2.30pm- CBC went to play chamber music and I had a walk in the woods with a friend Ellie.  We had tea at around 4pm and then we played Beethoven' Pastoral symphony with the birthday girl leading. After that, we had drinks and delicious canapes.  The dinner was really lovely and the barn had been so beautifully decorated. There was an absolute mound of cheese to eat after the 3 courses- it was a real feast!!! We chatted to lots of lovely friends and finally left waaaay too late. We arrived home at around 1.15am!!!

The birthday girl is a violinist who is also a keen gardener. After the success of my floral piano card, I decided to adapt the design I used for a card for CBC. I printed off a picture of the side of a violin and used it as a template to cut around some purple floral paper (realised I missed a trick of using paper with pansies on so we could have the pun of violas with a viola). I then drew on the F hole and the purfling around the edge of the fiddle shape. I stuck it to some lilac card and decided I wanted a patterned edge so I used my flower paper edge punch to decorate the edge.

The final detail was to add a Happy Birthday in irritatingly small silver outline stickers.

As an extra geeky touch, I wrote the birthday girl 's name in fancy Calligraphy on the envelope and used the Segno for the S of her name.

What do you think? Xx

Eco-Christmas cards 2021

I made a pledge to myself that if I came across something that I could make sure ends up in recycling, that I would try to ensure it reaches a place where it could be recycled. At school,I was using the Office scanner and I noticed a large pile of ex-school Induction pack covers ripped and put into the recycling.

Using this card and the tools below, I made 23 cards (the majority of these envelopeless postcards to add to the eco-dimension). The ones I sent in the post all reused old envelopes with decorative rectangles of blue envelope inards to cover up the previous usage. 

4 craft punches

1 embossing tool

1 embossing stamp

Guillotine

 

They may be simple But, I hope, effective.

Xxx

2 handmade cards

Hi there,

I thought I'd share two recent cards I made for family members.

The first was for my Mum's 70th birthday.

The mosaic tiles are all cut out from card packaging so anyone could make this card if they raid their recycling bin and have a base card and some glue.

The butterflies were made from an old birthday card envelope and I just used a gel pen to add some silver details.

 This second card was for my Brother In Law and he loves Scrabble. I cut out the tiles from the packaging of Scrabble magnets packaging.

Hope you are well and had a lovely day.

I was roasting hot at school today and the aircon was not working in the music room which in a room with only 2 high up windows that open a fraction, was unbearable!  I hope it is more bearable tomorrow!

xx

P.S. For anyone who wanted to know what the Pictionary pictures were they were:

Mineral Water

and 

Hopping Mad!

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 card for Lisa

It was a BIG birthday for Lisa recently- she has been preparing for the doom of it by celebrating 'Special days' in some way for the last year- this has been brilliant to be an observer of on her blog. Do drop by to wish her a happy birthday and see how she has marked certain days!

Anyway,  I am hoping she has now received her card and I can share the 4th card I have made this holiday!

Lisa's card is made almost entirely out of recycled materials. In this case, the shiny white card came from a sample pack of card that a friend had from work and the red and blue came from yet more envelopes I received from school kids. 

The thought behind this card is that I know how fond Lisa is of Red with white polkadots so I made sure that featured in the card.

To achieve the 3d effect, I simply cut 5 of the dresses (using a punch) and layered them on top of each other. 

I've made quite a few dress cards using this punch so I do think it has been a good tool to own!

What colour would YOUR dress have to be if I made you a card for a special birthday?

xx

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

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

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

4th Anniversary card

Hello there!

CBC and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary this week! Hurrah
It is, apparently, the anniversary of fruit, flowers and in modern times, linen.
CBC ordered a new duvet cover for us,under the auspice of the anniversary- tenuous, but it is very pretty!
I made him this card!

 Knowing it was to be a fruit anniversary, when I googled, "4th anniversary card", I saw quite a few puns based on pears.  This seemed quite a nice way of incorporating the fruit idea.
It was simply a matter of drawing myself a pear template & cutting pears out from green mirrored cards  The stems were from an old brown envelope & the leaves and hearts from some other scrap paper.  The lettering was just a silver gel pen.

I thought it would be fun to display it on top of the trug of apples and pear windfalls I picked up from my garden yesterday.

Anyway, I would like to say a Happy Anniversary to my lovely husband.

xx

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!