Sympathy Cards

I had two sympathy cards to make this week - one for the wife of my mum's cousin.   The last of that generation - I am now one of the oldest generation of the family living - but not the oldest.   The other was for a long standing friend.   We have been friends since our teens, and we both got married on the same day.  (A standing joke between us as I got the slot at the village church that she wanted, so she got married in a different church).   We lost touch and now she lives in the next road to me.   I shall think of her later this year too, when we both would have been celebrating our golden weddings.

As you can see the the two cards are similar.  I wanted to keep them simple but a little bit cheerful in these difficult times.   The inspiration came from my new Clarity Club die that arrived on Monday.  The aperture has a section of one of the Clarity paper pads behind it.

Floral Birthday Card

This is the card I made for my daughter.     I used Clarity Designer paper for the flowers, leaves, sentiment and the strip down the left-hand side.   I cut the flowers and leaves using a Craftascope die, and then stamped them.   I then shaped them and added a bit of detail with a white Sakura pen, and added some jewels for the centre.  The "brick wall" die was from Paper Roses, which was cut from black card.  I fell in love with this die, as I could see that when cut from card it could also be used as a stencil.  I have added a bit of colour to the "brickwork", so you can see where my thoughts for another use were going.

The peel-off box also came out and I discovered yet more matching peel-offs to edge the strip and add to the corners on the right.   (Peel-offs do tend to get overlooked these days don't they - time for a comeback!)

Below is a close up for the stamped and die cut leaves and flowers.

.... and on the same theme

I had another card to make this week - this time for a male, so I thought I would carry on with the idea I had for the card I posted the other day, and do some more experimenting, this time with embossing powder.

Once again I used some Clarity Designer Paper and Craftascope stamps - this time one of the leaves, which I embossed with white embossing powder.   The sentiment was cut from the reverse of the Designer Paper and was once again a Clarity die.    I water-coloured some darker blue and green on the leaves, and again found some peel-offs in my stash to match.

Simple Birthday Card

I wanted to try out my new Craftascope stamps, and having seen a card with a strip down the side I decided to try them out on that.

I cut a strip of Clarity Designer paper, and randomly stamped the daisy.   It looked quite effective, but then I had the idea of trying a white gelly roll pen on the petals (yes I was at this stage just playing to see what effects I could get).   I then remembered that I had a birthday card to make ........

and thus the card above evolved.  I edged the strip with some peel-offs - yes probably like most most of you I have a stash of them from when I first started crafting.  I also found some little circle peel-offs in a matching colour - so those were added to the centres of the flowers.   I die cut the sentiment using a Clarity die, and added an insert.

Birthday Card

Another card made with Clarity dies.   The bird in a tree was a Clarity Club one, and the Happy Birthday from another set.   Backed with Clarity Parchment.   The Happy Birthday was  cut from the matching Clarity Designer paper to the parchment used.   I also added a little sparkle to the bitd and leaves, albet it doesn't show up in the photo.

Shades of Blue Birthday Card

Very similar to the card I posted yesterday, but with some blue backing paper from the Northern Lights pad, and using the die that comes with the Happy Birthday.

Shades of Red Birthday Card

I used one of the new Clarity Fresh Cut Foral Framedies for this card.  This one comes with the sentiment Thinking of You, but I used the Happy Birthday from another die set.   Cut out of the card, and then a sheet of their Northern Lights paper mounted behind it.   Simple but effective.

Christmas Cards 3

It's back to Christmas cards again today, and another one of the designs of a batch I made.     Clarity dies again, mounted on to one of their design paper sheets, which had also been die cut.   Finished off with a couple of Julie Hickey stamps, which were stamped with a Nuvo green ink pad.

I nearly forgot my cousin's birthday - Clarity Fresh Cut dies to the rescue.   These dies and the Clarity backing paper don't need much more.

I added a sentiment from Creative Expressions which continues on the insert to read Have a Fabulous Birthday.

Anniversary Card

A simple card using one of the Clarity aperture dies, and back with a Clarity designer paper, and a sentiment created in Craft Artist.

A Little Bird Told Me ..

Today it is a simple little card for a man (don't we hate those)  I was struggling to come up with an idea, and then the postie delivered some mail with this lovely little die from Tonic in it (which was free with an order!)  Result - just what I needed.

I cut it out of black card, also using one of my Clarity picot dies around it      I could have chosen not to use the picot die and just cut the image out of the centre of the card.   (It also comes with it's own surround to make a hanging bauble tag sort of thing.) 

I also cut a circle from Clarity Designer paper (Rainbow River) to back the image.

As my eyes are still not that good following my cataract op  (distance is fine, but still have problems with close work until I get me new glasses) I used a square die to align the pencil lines I wanted to draw in the corner (I know even so they are a bit wobbly as I couldn't actually see the corner of the die - duh! .... but you get the gist of the idea to make life simpler.

Keeping the front of the card simple, I just made an insert in Craft Artist to continue the sentiment, and created some matching corners, and added a picture of aircraft in greyscale to complete, as the recipient loves aircraft.