Gold and Cream Wedding Card

Isn't it always the way? I've been waiting for ages for a wedding so I can make a nice card and it happens right when I have my craft room all packed up ready to move house!

Luckily I managed to find a box with a few left over bits and pieces and have come up with this card entirely from scrap.

The concertina heart was a left over from my Christmas cards and the rest were bits and pieces left over from other cards. The embossed paper was a piece from a wedding card I made a few years back and although it's not clear, the gold piece of paper is also lightly embossed with a satin finish...also a scrap I found in the same box as the cream embossed paper. The remaining embellishments were scraped together from a small box of odds and ends in the same box - a couple of leafy twigs, a cream rose, a jewelled pin I had made as an experiment a while back and a couple of bread dough embellishments that were already sprayed gold. Not hugely imaginative, but it ended up looking somewhat decent in the end.

It'll still be a while before we move so it may be a few months before I'm able to keep my blog up to date.

Sun Flowers

So cheerful and just right for a card. This started as an exercise in shading with copics...something I am yet to master on small scale things.

I was also trying out a new type of centre fold card. I made a mistake on cutting the side panels - they should have gone right down to the bottom. Of course I didn't realise you'd see the bottom of the side panels until I'd cut and glued them on. So then I decided to cut out some flowerpots (which you can't see  very well) and some foliage and glued one set of foliage behind each flowerpot at the back of the fold and one set behind the front of the fold. It gives it a rather nice 3d effect. While I was scrabbling in my box of embellishments for something to put on the front, I came across a packet of painted wooden ladybirds that I bought age ago.  I glued those on to the front. The ladybirds on the flowerpots in the drawing are part of the original picture, so it all tied in nicely.

Simnple birthday card

Sometimes less is more - particularly for cards for men.

I got the inspiration for this card from another I saw on Pinterest. I used a 300gsm white card as a base, then layered on some hand made paper at the bottom and a piece of patterned paper for the top and tied the ribbon around. A fragment of the same ribbon was folded in half and glued just under the top layer. The card was finished off with black acrylic jewels. I rounded the corners on the bottom using the corner rounder  on my envelope board (another great bit of equipment!).

Father's Day Card 2

 

A simple card for Father's Day, using layering and a large sentiment. I hand cut the layered paper banner ends. The card is finished with black acrylic jewels.

Father's day card

What to make for a man?

I found the image I used for this card on  TuckDB Ephemera. The images on the TuckDB site are postcards that are over 100 years old and are public domain. I generally download the big image so that I can make a 300dpi quality image for printing and then use Photoshop to modify it, clean and extend the background for use with paper dies. The images that I have "cleaned", I am making available for download. You can download the image I "cleaned" for this card here. The right hand edge is not great, but gives enough room to crop and looks fine cropped. I've also added a sentiment to the image.

You can resize the image using Phoxo software (see my tutorial on using digital stamps). Once cleaned, I printed the image on a bubble jet printer, cut the image and sponged the edges using black ink. I used two sizes of label dies from Spellbinders for the image and it's dark green background, then layered these on another cut out using a Spellbinders die. I then cut the remaining background layers using a Cutterpillar Pro. This bit of equipment is possibly the best investment in card making equipment I've ever made! It cuts like a dream.

My one gripe about spellbinders labels is that even though I used consecutive dies, the difference in sizes is too great, leaving a border which I think is too thick.To get a thinner border you have to buy an additional set  and they are not cheap! I'm thinking I might trace around one of the dies in gold pen to add a boarder to break up the thickness but I don't want to risk ruining the card either....so maybe I should leave well enough alone?

Angela

Anniversary Card 2013

My wedding anniversary is just before Christmas and this year we are celebrating 32 years of marriage. This is the card I made for my husband.

I used 300gsm white card stock for the base, then layered two matting boards using blue shaded blue paper. The base was an A4 sheet, folded in half and then I trimmed off an inch from the bottom.

The top cut out is a spellbinders die, which comes with an oval which I used to make the blue oval matting board, cut from the same shaded blue paper as the matting board. The blue backing board is 1/2 inch larger than the die cut out. I printed the sentiment onto white cardstock and cut it out using the second largest spellbinders classic oval die.

The lower boards were cut 1/4 inch smaller for each layer. I layered a blue layer, then white then a second  blue layer. The ribbon is one inch wide satin and is tied around the last two matting boards and into a double bow. The board was layered with foam tape onto the lower blue backing boards, which were then attached to the card base with foam tape.

Finally I added three pale blue diamontes to the sentiment, and used the same pale blue diamontes to bling up the spellbinders cut out.

Snowman card

Today I have some postable Christmas cards – ones that will fit in a standard 5×7 envelope. I’ve made about 18 of these to send this Christmas.

I got the inspiration from one I saw somewhere on the net last year. The one I saw was blue and I’ve changed a few things, but it’s basically the same principle. The matting boards are plain burgundy card that I’ve had for about 15 years. The two biggest white boards were embossed using s Stampin Up poinsettia folder. The snowman graphic I bought from someone on the internet and changed the colours in photoshop as it was green tones and I wanted red tones. I placed 6 of them on  an A4 page and had them printed at officeworks. I worked out the board sizing  and the photo corners in MTC and cut them out on my KNK Zing which made short work of the job,  then it was just a matter of layering the boards, punching out a simple flower and adding the bling.