Cards 4

Hi there,

I thought it was time to share the next batch of cards I made during the Easter holiday.

I was sent a present with a really cute label on it featuring metallic brogue shoes! I decided to reuse it in a totally recycled/reused card. The base card which is in complimentary gold and blue was actually a Patisserie Valerie Cake box which CBC saved for me "Because I thought it would be good for cards!". I added some stars which were made from some other reused packaging including that School prospectus again! I think this is my favourite one! I used a corner punch to make the edges more attractive!

The next card was also made using some reused materials.  A plant catalogue had some really lovely foliage pages in good quality paper so I punched some scallop squares and then mounted some flowers punched from an old red envelope. I layered 2 flowers atop each other to make it more daisy-like. For the centres and the orange decorations around each square, I used a sunburst paper punch again using some old coloured envelopes for the materials.

For my 40th, I was bought some tulips and a chocolate bar by my Year 2 colleagues.  The chocolate bar came in a pretty box so I cut the front of it and mounted it onto Dahlia paperas the colours seemed complimentary.  Finally, I mounted this onto a white base card and used a corner punch for the final touch.

The last card was my Dad's birthday card. I used the box from a pack of Seasalt socks I bought for CBC and cut all the writing from it.  I mounted it onto 3d pads.  To create a little beach effect at the bottom, I ripped some pieces of brown envelope and old school exercise book to create dunes and waves. I used some coloured blue pencils to add some extra colour.

And that's nearly all the cards I made I think!

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

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

Paper flowers- my crafting tool favourite

 Here's a card I made for a friend's 40th birthday this weekend.

If there is a piece that I maintain has been most versatile in my craft stash, it would be a flower punch. I have a Woodware daisy punch in 3 size and all 3 are craft workhorses for me.

You can see from the inside flower, what the basic flower looks like. To achieve the above effect, each flower is made up of three of the basic shapes. To get the 3d effect, you need a large embossing tool and basically, all you do is rub around the outside of the petals in order to make the petals curl outwards.

Apart from some self-adhesive gems (which were a present but you can get hundreds of them for £1 in The Works), the rest of the card was just achieved by punches.  

An edging punch (Martha Stewart Crafts- also a present) and a star-burst punch, for the inside of the flower.

If I look back over many or most of my flower designs, there is a wealth of flower punched cards.

4 flower designs

Sunflower

A flower from circles

Cath Kidston recycled florals

3d flowers

Scrap card punched florals

Tiny flowers wedding card

Music paper flowers

Would you invest in this simple tool?

It's been used for stencilling, wedding decorations and much more!

xx

Linking with Creative Mondays with the lovely Claire. It is soooooooo long since I have linked a craft!

The stars are all used up

I haven't done a crafty post on here for ages, but I thought I would.

Wanted a chic card in a hurry but no time and don't want to spend loads of resources?

No worries: look to the simple star and black card for a quick solution.

I have stacks of craft resources but I don't like to throw them all at one card. It's the inner-thrifter in me and a certain amount of environment conscience that says, "It might end up in the bin- don't make TOO much go in the bin."

 Anyway, the main stars of these cards are the paper stars.  I bought an entire pack with over 100 (probably more- it was rammed full!)  of these from Poundland

 It was a simple matter to begin with a central sentiment (using an outline sticker) then arrange the stars in a circle around it.  Fill in the space with a silver gel men and Bob's your Uncle.

I used Poundland 3D double-sided sticky pads (I used an 6th of ONE sticky pad under each star) to stick the stars on because I like them to look a bit more 3d but this lot really only took me about 15 minutes in total.  I'm always willing to make duplicate when I find a simple idea!

Oh and a great crafting tool is a corner rounder punch. Like a hole punch but it turns a sharp corner into a nice curvy one!!

Better still, you can put any greeting in the middle of the circle and they can go to any age!

Do you have any simple ideas you like to use frequently?

Linking with Claire Justine at Creative Mondays

Decoupage and childish rockets

 Hello, one and all!

I hope all is well with you. I had a bit of a nightmarish start when I reached the station and discovered somebody had been hit by a train again and so there were awful delays meaning I reached school at 10.05am, having left home at 7.45!!! Oh dear.

Just a quick crafty post today.  Here's the last of my August card making.

Now, if you've heard of 3D Decoupage- the art of cutting out and piling up cut outs of the same image to give a 3D effect, then you'll recognise this.

However, I find that I don't do decoupage very much because:
a) I find it unbelievably faffy.
b) I am not the best at delicate cutting.
c) It feels a bit like cheating- all I am doing is cutting around pre-made pictures. I also feel like I am not being creative. I'm essentially assembling a box!
d) often it can feel expensive to buy ready-made sets of decoupaged images.

Anyway, I had a couple of sets of decoupaged images that came free with magazines over the years so I decided for once, to actually finish a decoupage.

 This one is made of quality paper so it was a good freebie. Quite a cute traditional seaside scene.

 You can see from the side, the piling up of the same image (often using a smaller element of the original image) with 3d pads.

This decoupage of the Kingfisher was a cheaper quality paper freebie and not so many layers but layering it on gingham card made it a bit more cheery.

The final one is actually on its side.
I saw a design for a rocket ship in a magazine (not an actual one to follow, just someone exhibiting a piece) and decided I could copy it to make my own template.  Using the funky foam, I made this decidedly ropey-looking rocket.  A fun cheerful boy card perhaps!

Have you made anything recently?  Do share if so!


xx

I'm off to bed!

Linking to Claire Justine, Creative Mondays

Take ONE tool...

You know me- I like my workhorse tools in my craft making endeavours.  

My Woodware extra large daisy punch and its medium  and small equivalents are such hard-working items. You can see them/buy them here.

As is often the way when I make cards, I make one card and then, since I've got the tools out, I often feel inspired to make a card with the same method but a different design. I do have many cards in my card collection but it's nice to have a choice. 

One great thing about designs that use paper punches is that you can make a card out of relatively little, so if you are on a budget or want your children to have a low-cost activity, you can use any scraps of paper.

My top sources of punching material are:

tissue boxes, junk mail, used envelopes, thick wrapping paper, magazines with a print background.

Anyway, I digress.  Onto the cards.

To make any of the daisies I've made you must:

• Punch 3 identical sized daisies in the same colour.
• Fetch a ruler and an embossing tool and a piece of funkyfoam.
• roughly 'draw' lines with your embossing tool along the petals of each flower- this will make them appear more ridged and they will also curl in rendering a more 3D effect.
• Layer them on top of each other so there are no gaps between petals.
• Punch a circle to go in the middle.

I have a lot of aperture (cards with a pre-cut hole) cards in my collection which I find very hard to use (in fact, there are some I'm quite sure I'll never fathom using! Why did I buy them!?) but I discovered that the daisy fitted in this circle apeture. I drew some gold spots onto yellow paper, plus added a line to the top and bottom and added some Marie Curie daffodil stickers to the line. To be honest, I'm not particularly pleased with this but it will do.

All these are made out of some paper scraps from packaging or paperwork and I used the medium paper punch.  Simple but this is my favourite.

Similar to the last one, if you think you've seen that scalloped gingham before, that would be because it comes from the same container as the ice-cream card from a few weeks ago! This one feels a little sparse but I like simplicity.

This one is probably my favourite of the lot- it's the colours! The background is a panel from a tissue box (free!!!!) and it didn't take much to make this but it works (I hope).

They're all different but unified by the same method of constructing the daisy!

Have you made any cards recently? DO share if so!

xx
Sarah-Jane made her first foray into card-making, these are super and The  Dormouse at View from the teapot, shared some  beautiful cards she made (she makes unbelievably beautiful Zentangles too, of which I am a proud owner!)

Linking with Claire Justine at Creative Mondays!

xx

Using up some old residents in the craft stash!

Evening Chapettes and Chaps! I hope all is tickety-boo in your respective worlds and your weekends were more interesting and productive than mine which largely consisted of sleep and cleaning! Yes, even the bathroom was tackled! I did go into town for some new face-cream as Herbfarmacy cream had run out- I looked in the charity shops but left relatively unscathed with a mere belt, book and one or two Christmas presents for someone (despite being swayed by gingham skirt and Peter pan collar orange blouse!)   I was, however, most excited in the local Health food/vegan/veggie shop to discover a tin of tempeh curry! I cannot wait to eat it! I also came back with 3 facecreams rather than one! Oops! I couldn't decide but at least I won't have to buy any for months! I might even summon up the enthusiasm to review them at some point!

Onto some more cards I have made.

In reference to the title of the post, I am guilty of hoarding items in my craft stash for a long period of time.  They sit there taking up space and more comes to join them but the older chaps don't leave. Thus, I decided to use a few.

 The 3d stickers on this one came free with a magazine a loooong time ago and I used one from the pack as I always use things like this sparingly. I then gave myself a stern telling off and said, "Just use the whole lot on one card!" and I think they work well as a team.

 The background came from an old card I was given which I thought had great potential for recycling, yet it sat in a box for years.  So too for the quilled and sewn topper which was made years ago too. I decided to team them up together for moral support at entering the big wide world!

 Ha, one great section of my stash is pieces of card from packaging which I think too nice to chuck away! The gold patterned material is from a chocolate box (I recommend saving chocolate and tissue boxes!). Twas a simple matter to trim it and mount with the Blue Peter staple, double sided sticky tape.

Well, the butterfly punch has more than earned its place in my craft collection as was used to punch 200 butterflies wedding place names and probably a further 200 for table sprinkles! You can see how I used it in June for my sister's card too.  It was a simple matter to punch the butterflies in metallic card (which HAS been in my stash for an age- at least 6 years or so!) and stick them onto an outline line. I noticed the 'confetti'from the wings littering the table and thought that it surely would be appropriate for adding to the sides as extra decoration though it was a PAIN to stick them on,let me tell you!


Have you been making anything recently?
If so, leave me a comment, I'd love a nosy!

xxx

Linking to Creative Mondays with Claire Justine

Sweet treats

You can tell I had a mammoth card-making sesh over the holidays! It happens when you get several weeks in a row with new cards featuring!

Sometimes, you see a card idea that is JUST GENIUS! You think, "Yes, I must make that!" and then months, years in this case, pass by and you don't do anything about them.

That happened with the amazing biscuit card!

Papercraft Inspirations did this feature with some biscuit designs and I decided to give it a go. Rather than using the templates and tracing them (which would involve photocopying, locating tracing paper and then transferring, I decided to make them free-hand.


This involved finding the suitable coloured papers-

• Custard cream and Jammy dodger come courtesy of a penpal letter envelope.
• Bourbon comes courtesy of the Aldeburgh festival guide-
• Pink Wafer biscuit comes courtesy of the craft stash.

I drew the shapes and then, on the back of them, I drew the designs (freehand) backwards.
Use an embossing tool (rather like an old biro that doesn't work anymore) and embossed all the designs.

Turned them over and in the case of the non-bourbon biscuits, used a white pencil to lightly draw over the lines and then went around the outside of them with a light brown/pink pencil to highlight them a bit more.

Annoyingly, I searched for my paper doilies which I wanted to 'serve' them on, to no avail (until yesterday-grr!) so I just stuck them to a textured lilac card-blank with 3d pads so they stuck out!

And voila, we have the biscuit card!

From one extreme to another, I was looking at the Daring Cardmakers link up from last week with the fruit theme and totally fell in love with Beckie's Clever design which made strawberries out of hearts and flowers. Immediately, I decided to make one! No, I couldn't wait!

To make my strawberries, I used my work-horse 'x-cut heart punch' to punch 9 hearts and used my dragonfly punch to create 9 green dragonflies

Embossing the strawberries, I layered them 3 atop each other to make the strawberries with one upside down dragonflies between each layer and stuck onto some gingham scraps,

Simples!

The last design was made at about 1am when I really should have been in bed.

This came about because I was looking at some honeycomb paper ice-creams on Louise's at Polka dots and freckle spots' blog and suddenly had a vision to make 3d looking ice-cream, so I punched about 6 circles in mint, strawberry and chocolate flavours and folded them in half and glued them down on top of another old envelope. Simple and sweet, I then took the scraps of gingham and scalloped them to make a frame.

SO easy to make (and cheap) but I'm quite proud of it!

So that's your Just desserts!

Any other ideas for sweet-based cards?  I've made quilled boiled sweets before but I fancy making some more!

Linking up to Creative Mondays with Claire Justine!

x

My Citrus hearts

It's been a while since I bought a craft magazine.  I used to buy them quite regularly and was bought a subscription to my favourite magazine many years ago. Nowadays, I don't buy them often as I have many craft materials and many designs in old magazines to look at.  

A few months ago, I was quite sad to discover my shed had leaked and totally wrecked most of my craft magazine stash but luckily there are a few still kicking around.

My favourite magazine is Papercraft Inspirations. They give you lots of different card designs, there's always a free gift  and my favourite section is the Quick cards section where you get about 15 designs that don't require loads of expensive resources and often make use of the templates they provide. (plus there are always free papers)

In one of my old magazines, there was this design for making a simple-looking cocktail card. 

It looks pretty identical to what I made.

As you can see, all that was needed was a white card blank and the paper colours and scissors and glue-stick. I used a jam jar and pringle lid to make the circle shapes (serendipitously the right sizes for going with my hearts) and I did use my x-cut heart punch.  

After I'd made them, I decided that I loved the heart citrus effect and wondered if I could use this idea for a different part where the citrus slice was the star of the show.

The x cut punch can be used to punch through funky-foam sheet so I made a lemon, lime and orange circle and then cut them in half to get more from my foam!

I sat and watched 'The Three Doctors' on DVD whilst making them. It was SO nice to finally see it after having read references to it for years. I bought it on DVD from Ebay.

For the background, I just drew tiny triangles with fineliner pens (measured) and then drew the groan-worthy sentiments freehand down the bottom.

On the whole, I was rather pleased with the design.

Funky foam and a simple heart punch are all you need for these (aside from the basics such as pens and card bases) and funky foam can be very cheap, sourced from Poundland as well as proper craft shops. My x-cut heart punch cost about £5 9 years ago and has more than paid for itself.

Linking with Daring Card Makers whose weekly challenge is Feeling Fruity this week and Creative Mondays with Claire Justine

xx

A right old crafting fest: Making up my Blogger snail mail parcel for Janet

Hi, I thought I'd share a post about what I sent to Janet reciprocally for the recent Blogger snail mail swap. I was waiting to see if she'd post first anything first, but she doesn't seem to be so I will just go ahead and write this anyway.

One of the things I like about Blog swaps is really really trying to think about what to get for someone, particularly when it inspires you to craft.  I have always tried to make something for most swaps I do, though the pre-Christmas ones didn't really give me much time for this.

I do like to a proper thorough job on trying to find something for that person by reading the blog archives (that makes me sound scaaaary, but I'm trying to show the dilligence!) of the blogger in question. By that, I mean, really going through their archive to find what they really like. I did this with Janet, reading every wishlist she'd posted ever, looking at particular themes that arose.

In this case: books, words, lettering, maps, mustard, Peterpan collars, vintage fun, dresses were main themes that I noticed.

The first item I decided to make was a Scrabble Brooch.  I'd seen a brooch on one of her wishlists, seen she'd recently starting wearing a brooch and I had been intending to make Scrabble brooches for a while with my Nan's Scrabble set. Having purchases some tiny brooch-backs a while ago, I just needed to use some strong all-purpose glue as I have not plucked up the courage to try my glue-gun yet (I am scared of them!). It wasn't particularly neatly done but from the front it was fine.

 I had a small white box from a pair of earrings I'd bought so I decided to customise it. I know Janet likes book text crafted into other things, so I found these love heart confetti pieces I had picked up from my table at a friend's wedding last year (yes, I know that's a bit cheeky but like they were going to go round and rescue every bit of confetti after their wedding, they'd have just ended up in the bin) and stuck them to the lid with an edging sticker from my craft stash.


Pre-making this card, I'd picked up a 25p book in a charity-shop to use for craft purpose, making sure it wasn't something I'd love but you know what, I could not bring myself to rip out pages of the actual story, it just seemed sacrilege so luckily, it had a preview of the next book in the series at the back and so I ripped those out to use, thus meaning I didn't feel guilty.

Janet declared her love of peter-pan collars, so decided to use a circle punch, dress-shaped punch and edging punch to make this card. I'd love a dress like this.  I wrote a rather long and rambly message inside explaining why I'd chosen the gifts. Was rather pleased with it.


Having seen Janet's liked to make craft items out of old music, I decided to use some music which had been destined for the dump at Music camp (the book I used for my Ivy Heart  collage in the summer) and an envelope template to make her 5 envelopes out of them, added some gold ink to the edges and tied them up.

Since Janet showed that she liked map-items in various wishlists, I used an old 2002 atlas I'd saved when we were clearing out Grandad's house to make some larger sized map envelopes.


The next item was a bit of an afterthought.  I spied a small decoupaged music heart (you can see it below in the 7th picture) I'd made in the summer and decided to try and make a coaster using decoupage technique for Janet, double-sided with book paper and maps. You can see the process below, which included trying to varnish it with PVA glue.



It looked ok though I wish I'd have avoided the yellow borders!

The other side, still from the preview chapter.  I did varnish it with PVA. Not sure how durable or waterproof it is though, but we'll see...


The final hand-crafted item I made was a bookmark. I used the remainder of the turquoise card from the card and cut out yellow letters and shapes with some punches.  Janet had featured a Hello Sunshine postcard on her mantelpiece and a bag in her wishlist so I figured she might like it for a bookmark since she is an ardent book reader.  Luckily, I had some laminating of Music Vocabulary to do at school and the word cards are slightly smaller than A4 so I squeezed the bookmark in with them.



So that's almost the end of crafted items which I was quite pleased about though nervous of Janet's reaction because she is a neat crafter and I a scruffy one.

What about the other items?



I know Janet likes Crocheted Peter pan collars and I had picked up one or two when I visited Bruges, a place famed for its lace, (indeed, I sent one to my Blogger friend Lauren of Someonelikeyou) and had had it in my storebox for a long time, intending to give it to someone who'd loved such collars and would appreciate it so I was delighted to think of it for Janet.

Janet declared a love of mustard clothes recently and when I saw this bangle, it reminded me of the cable knit jumper she'd worn in a blog post.

Finally, Janet loves books. I stalked many blog book reviews in order to see if she'd come across Carola Dunn (whose books I love), and took a chance that she enjoyed Agatha Christie so might like this gentle Whodunnit!


The last task remained to wrap up the items. I decided to design some wrapping paper especially for Janet. I opened an A3 sized Publisher document found the opening quote from our mutual favourite book, I capture the castle and collaged this all over the page.  I then cropped an image of Janet's own logo and superimposed it over the top at equal intervals and then, after printing, had some unique wrapping paper.


You can see the items wrapped up in their box (recycled Glitterati box so had a nice sparkly bow on it) ready to go. I accidently left out a roll of vintage ribbon I'd intended to send also,but never mind!

It was great fun trying to think of things that Janet would like, she really did make me get my act together and do some crafting, which I haven't done much of for ages,so I love it when a swap partner is the type of person to spark my creativity!  Thank you Janet, and I'm so glad you liked your presents!



Linking up to:

A round tuit with Creating my way to success



Creative Mondays with Claire Justine

 Brilliant Blog posts with Honest Mum


 You're gonna love it Tuesday with Kathe with an e