30th Birthday card

I have just completed an order for a birthday card for a female. The remit was put the picture on the card, make girly and put the words Big Sis on it.

Hopefully I have managed to tick all the boxes and that the card will be well recieved.  All I now need to  do is make a box for the card and then I will be finished!

After some measuring, cutting and more measuring I made a box to hold the card. Hope everyone likes it!!

Mums birthday card and 21st card

Well I haven't yet got round to making the boxes that I mentioned yesterday. Well I have made the prototype, so all I have to do now is work out how I want to decorate them.

But before I can get those done I needed to complete some orders. That being a mothers birthday card and a 21st birthday card for a male.

The mothers card I used my butterflys and flowers. Plus I pushed my poor brain to its limit by making a step card!! Of course then there was all the measuring of the matting and layering. Plus when finished it didn't fit in any of my envelopes and was too big for me to make an envelope. So with two sheets of 12 x 12 paper I ended up making a bag for it to go in.

The birthday card for a male 21st was in some ways harder. i had no idea of the likes and dislikes of the person it was going to be given to. So I went for simple blue papers with a cut out 21. All in all I am quite pleased with the finished article and the bonus was it fitted in my envelopes!!

Schedule checkin

so I need to check if i can schedule a post to come on at a certain time. I thought i had done everything correctly until i realised that blogger is set to pacific time and not GMT!! Which means a seven hour difference!! So therefore to set a post to come live at 7.00am gmt i need to set it at 23.00 the previous day!

Swirly bird thankyou cards

  So The past eleven weeks I have attended Cardio rehab. Which means that twice a week I have found myself at Chester University Gym. Working out on the treadmill, rower, bikes and all weights equipment!! I have muscles that I never knew I had, and apparently all this fitness lark strengthens the other muscles around the heart as well as the heart, thus keeping me alive a little longer! people there include those who have suffered heart attacks, had pacemakers etc fitted or like me have heart failure.
Well next week I complete my twelve weeks so I wanted to make some thankyou cards and little gifts.  tonight I made the cards and tomorrow I will make up some matching little boxes to put some small gift for the girls and lads that work there.

the fact that I just had delivery of Swirly Birds Stamp Set meant that there was no contest in what I was goung to use for the cards.  Stamping in Flirty Flamingo and black memento ink, I then used a black pen to put dashes around the outside of the flowers.  A strip of black card and the thanks cut using the Hello You thinlet dies, plus a little punched heart and my cards are complete.

In all honesty I wish I had used better card to stamp on as it was not as crisp as I would have wished, but I was using up some card that I had been given before buying in some better quality. i hope you like my finished cards, hopefully I will be able to post in the next few days the boxes that I have made to match.

Paper flowers a la Stampin Up

So every so often I have a paper flower binge, where I use up paper scraps to make flower embellshments for my cards.

On this occasion I used the five petal pansy flower punch

I punched four flowers out of card. Did a bit of fringing of the petals, a few minutes of manipulating the punched shapes and suddenly i had some rather pleasing flowers to use on my cards,

Obviously you dont have to make fancy dancy flowers with your punch. But it just goes to show how versatile this Stampin Up product is!

If you would like a better explanation of how to make these flowers go to my youtube tutorial for a step by step guide.  I guarantee before you know it you will be knee deep in flowers that you have made!

https://youtu.be/hxAKwZjlqZY

You tube go slow

So today i did what i thought was a quick video tutorial.
Recorded without mishaps and pleased with the finished item. Then to upload to youtube.......nightmare!
All evening and still not loaded.
So all i can say is help! Surely there are faster ways to get a video up.

Anniversary cards

Well today has mainly been spent looking after my ten month old grandson. He is now toddling and so there is little chance to get crafting whilst he is awake! 

But once my son collected him I was able to put the finishing touches to three anniversary cards that I had started.

I am really pleased with them, hope you like them too!

Wedding Belles

I am in a geoup that involves Stampin Up demonstrators swopping cards each month. Now the theme doe June was Wedding Belles!

So although I have plenty of non SU products ideal for this theme, I was more than a little short on items just using SU products!

I used some papers from Have a cuppa paper stack, no longer available since the new magazine came out 😕. But with the black hearts on white background it was ideal for my needs.

I went for a gatefold styleand a square panel on the front all held together with some white ribbon from my sewing stash, sorry on e again not SU!  Using my 2 1/2" punch i punched 3 circles from some pinch patterened paper. Sponged the back and the edges with flirty flamingo ink. And cut a swirl out of the paper and made three paper roses. I stuck in some old pearl beads that were hanging around. Used the wing from the bird builder punch. Oh and some pink beaded trim once again from my sewing box!

Using the Better Together stamp set on the outside and inside, and colouring some random hearts with flirtty flamingo and touching with a dash of wink of stella.

All in all I am pretty pleased with the final result. I apologise that I resulted to using non SU ribbon and trims but I have so much in my sewing box I really can't warrant buying more until it is all used up.

Have a cuppa dsp paper stack

2 ½ circle punch

Black memento ink pad

http://www2.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=132708

Better together stamp set.  

http://www2.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=141736

Wink of stella

http://www2.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=141897

Flirty flamingo ink pad

http://www2.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=141397

Crazy birds and Stampin Up

Ok so although I am a Stampin Up demonstrator that doesn't mean that I don't use and enjoy other brands. If I like it and think I can get good use of it well then why not buy it?

Every so often I want a quirky card and so out comes the Tim Holtz crazy birds set. Also out comes either prisma colours or copics, even distress inks or SU inks. I scour through all my word stamps and if I am unable to find something suitable, well then I use a word program to make my own!

Couple all the above with card and various dsp, quite often from my SU stash, and I can rustle up some fun and funky cards.

Here are some I made recently, I hope you like them.

Butterfly basics

Oh I love this stamp set and framelets! The more I use it the more ways I think of that I can make even more variety of cards.  This project was a little challenge that I set myself. One stamp set, one ink pad and only white card!  So I chose butterfly basics and by stamping onto my A4 card I made my own designer card. Th second card was decorated using the wet wipe that I had cleaned my stamps with! Finally I cut thhe cards into various shapes and sizes.

Then glue and diamensionals in hand I put my cards together. i hope you like them!!

The last few cards were made using the same set of stamps but obviously a different ink colour.

To buy the stamp set please follow thisl ink.  http://www2.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=137154

Make a lot from a little

Well today I wanted to make some cheap but cheerful birthday cards.  I donate some of my cards to the local oap group to sell for funds so I don't always want to have spent a lot of money or time producing them, but there again I want a good quality (after all my reputation as a card maker is at stake!).

So with aprox six sheets of 6x6 paper from the Stampin Up Pretty Petals dsp and the Better together ( http://www2.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=141736)     and Flower Shop stamp sets (http://www2.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=130942), 

using Calypso Coral ink. i managed to make over twenty cards, a selction of which I have put below.

It jst goes to show that you don't always need to throw a huge amount of stuff onto a card to make it something that someon will love to receive.

Monochromatic cards

I am remiss in the fact that i don't post often enough on my blog! Yet again i am attempting to rectify this glaring omission!  Hopefully this time i will keep my promise.

Recently i have been attempting to get as much as i can from as few items as possible! To that end i am using one or at the most two stamps sets. One ink pad. One colour card stock. One set of dies, either the ones matching the stamp set and/or word dies. Apart from glue and the odd piece of ribbon from my stash that is it.

I have managed to make over twenty cards in the various styles. I am pleased with them, and i hope you like them too.