Handbag card

A card with a little diffence for a forum pal's birthday. Inspired by watching a show on C&C wih handbag templates, I suddenly remembered I had some envelope templates that I bought at Farnborough, that you were supposed to be able to make handbags with. (I think they were the original templates sold by the company demonstrating on the tv).

So I had a play. I extended the template to create the flap, which is fastened with velcro dots and has a hidden Happy Birthday message under it. I used a rollergraph for the pattern on the flap, (done on both sides, so pattern is also there when you lift the flap) using a pretty rainbow metallic pad I fell in love with at Hobbycraft. Used a blue sugarcandy button to finish the flap and decorated the bag corner with some flora doodle, adhesive diamantes and a peel off initial for the recipient. I couldn't decide whether to add a handle, but in the end decided I liked the card as it was.

Nephews' cards - one using my Craft Robo!

I have had my Robo for some time now, and have been very lax about using it. I tried to create stuff myself, but failed miserably. I have made cards using free designs by other people that I have downloaded, but could never quite get things I had drawn to work. However, having watched a couple of show on C&C, and learned a few things, I took the bull by the horns and created this card for my nephew.

I cut the aperture for the image and the word Tony out of the base card using the Robo, and scored two lines down each side of the card. I then printed the image from my Messy Rabbit cd on 160gsm card, and with a bit of jiggling managed to get it to print out in the right place. This was then stuck to the inside of the front of the card. Obviously the word Tony was then white, so I coloured this in with a promarker pen, and also added some extra depth of colour to the ball and jersey on the image. I added matching sugarcandy buttons and edged the aperture first with letraset silver tape, and then highlighted the image and also the inside edge of the score lines with letraset red tape.

The second card is for another nephew - this time my great nephew (who is also nephew of the person for whom the first card was made!).

This time I used a Liliofthevalley diecut image, and matching backing papers. mounted on scalloped card using largest nestability shape, and lightly chalked the background. Finished with some matching sugarcandy buttons and Name and age cut from foam using my go kreate cutters. Like his uncle he is very much into football, but fancied a change this year - and felt the lad with a mobile was fairly apt!

60th Birthday Card

Suddenly realised one of my Sister-in-laws birthdays was upon me, and hadn't made the card, and it was an "0" birthday. Put this together yesterday, which was an achievement as my eyes were still recovering from having drops in them earlier in the afternoon!

Image, backing papers, and insert from Joanna Sheen's The Country Diary of an Edwardian lady. Also used some psychedelic pink paper, some glittery gel peel-offs around the topper, as well as either side of some ribbon. Sentiment printed on computer, and decorated with a few jewels for some "bling". Card stock was a deep maroon.

Galleon Card

I actually got around to making a card today. I have been so busy with other things. (Mainly producing the Centenary Launch edition of our County Guide Newsletter). I am itching to play with all the new craft stash I bought at the weekend, and had fully intended to play today - then I got side-tracked by some new genealogy entries on Ancestry - and finding some answers to some queries I had on the family tree! I need a 48 hour day!

Anyway I knuckled down this afternoon and created this simple card for my son's Godfather. I found this image and matching backing paper on Joanna Sheen's Jane Netley Mayhew CD. Edged both the image and backing paper with a gold promarker pen and mounted them on blue card. Created the letters for the name with blue fun foam from Hobbycraft, using my new Go-Kreate alphabet cutters, and stuck them to white card backed with same blue backing paper.

Golden Wedding Card

Front

Insert and Back

This card was not made by me - it was made by my 3 year old Granddaughter for her Great Grandparents Golden Wedding. (OK there was a little guidance and help from me - but mainly her work.)

She chose the bits she wanted to put on the card - we had to have some pink/purple! She actually want pink card, but I persuaded her that we needed white with some gold.

The bottle, glasses and rings were from some old Kanban stash I had, which we coloured gold with promarkers. Bea punched the papers (she likes playing with my punches - I was in charge of keeping it lined up!) and I stuck them on the card, as that was a tad difficult for her, then she stuck all the other bits on.

We had a bit of a problem with putting 50 on the front as she wanted to put the number 1 on it - so we compromised and put the "1" on the back - well she is 1st greatgrandaughter! Oh yes and we had to use the biggest numbers that I had, so a little help was needed in showing her where to place the 5 and 0! Just couldn't persuade her that we needed smaller ones! She didn't have room for the rings on the front either - she wanted them down the righthand side too - so another compromise was reached to put them under the 1 on the back!

I created the insert, with her mum and her cousin choosing the verse between them, and she helped punch the sides, and stuck the flowers on the left-hand side!

Turned out quite well for a 3 year old's effort! Hopefully it will be treasured by her GGPs.

Must confess she is quite a neat little crafter, if somewhat determined as to what she wants. She loves stamping, and can now colour inside the lines, and gets quite cross if it goes wrong - so we avoided stamping today!

Poppy Card

I made this card for an old school friend, using my new poppy stamp from the JS favourite flower stamps. Coloured with promarkers (of course). I scored around the white card and also edged it with gold. It was then mounted on red "corrugated" card.

For the card itself I used one of my rollergraph stamps, as I came across the box containing them, whilst tidying up and decided to give one an airing for this card! (Funnily enough Jak posted a card on her blog using a rollergraph image on the same day I found mine - so must have been some psychic crafting energy in the air!) Used a plain red ink pad for this.

I had intended to just stamp one "Happy Birthday" at the bottom right of the card, and although I lined up the writing on the stamp - it went askew! I discovered that the actual stamp doesn't line up with the wording on the top of the stamp. (Confess I had forgotten this since it is a long time since I used it last - think it will be taken off its wooden block for future use, as it is quite nice script - either that or will have to remember to stamp it on a blank piece of card, and cut it to fit!) However, the problem was overcome by randomly stamping the greeting over the card, so a "happy accident" twist to the finished card. Fortunately I hadn't stuck the topper on! (I bet the recipient of this card is laughing at my confession, as I know she reads my blog!)

The back of the card was finished with another line of the rollergraph image, and I also used it again on the envelope.

Card for great nephew

Boys cards are so difficult - particularly when their only interest seems to be football! Sorry the picture isn't brilliant!

Cut the shorts from navy card stock using the Booty and Boobs template, and mounted on cream cardstock which actually has lines scored on it (although they don't show that much). Had originally planned to do shorts (i.e. folded card) with a hidden message underneath, but changed my mind. Have made the shorts before just as a card, but it is a nightmare trying to do an insert for them - so much easier to mount them onto a card!

My granddaughter drew the numbers from a stencil and cut them out from red corrugated card, learning how turn the templates the wrong way round on the reverse so that the numbers weren't backwards (yes been, there done that, after producing a number for a card some time ago on cuttlebugged card - to find the number was the wrong way round! )

I also had the footballer boy decoupage in my stash, that I really needed to use up, before the boys in the family got too old! Used transparent 3D dots for the decoupage - they are brilliant, and if you have a narrow bit to adhere, you can roll them in your fingers to the shape you want!

Ginger Jar Card

I made this card for my sister-in-law's birthday next week, and also for the August challenge on the Joanna Sheen forum. The theme for August was: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

The something old was the blue cardstock, and some blue ribbon from my cake decorating stash, and the blue sentiment.

The something new was the use of Joanna's new CD Eastern Treasures, and my new Martha Stewart doily punch.

The something borrowed was the inspiration for the topper from my pal Sheila on the forum - based on an idea she did for her birthday card to me.

and of course the something blue is a bit obvious!

The backing paper came from Eastern Treasures, as did the ginger jar and the bird.

I resized the jar card in Publisher, and printed and cut it out. I then overlayed the same resized jar shape (on some different backing paper from the cd and positioned the words where I wanted them to appear. Deleted the jar shape and printed off the backing paper, with the wording on it.

Once printed off I carefully lined up the folded jar shape, traced the outline, and cut out the paper with the words on, and then another piece to match the pattern without words, these were used to "line" the topper. Ribbon was tied around the top of the jar, and then the topper glued to the card.

My husband asked how would the recipient know to open the topper - so I printed off the bird from the embellishment section of the cd and attached it to the top flap of the jar.

here is the inside of the topper.

I cut a strip of white card and cut out the doily edge, then made a faux "ribbon" to cover the join by cutting a thin strip of pearlised paper, and edging it with fancy thin peel-offs.

Birthday and Sympathy

Two very different cards - one for my Brother-in-law who is keen on sailing, and the second for the husband of a neighbour, whose wife died this week. using the Lily image I coloured recently, finished off with my new Martha Stewart punch that I got for my birthday.

Received Cards

Well I just had to share with you these beautiful hand-made cards received for my birthday:

The first three are from the family: Daughter Dawn, 7yr old grandaughter Ellie, and Dawn's MIL.

The next four are from members of the JS forum: Andrew, Adele, Janet and Sheila

another view of Sheila's showing secret message