Christening card

This is a card I made to celebrate the Christening of our 2 year old great niece at the weekend. The artwork is a free download from Rusty Alfrey designs and can be found here. Do take a look at this blog as there are some super designs.
I manipulated the image with a Photo program to get it the right colour and size (clever eh? It started out blue) It was then printed onto pearlescent paper and layered onto pink card.
The white card blank is A5 size and has been covered with a mat of pale pink card and white pearlescent paper the same as the topper. A double layer of different widths of pink organza ribbon have been attached across the corner of the larger matting and a pink organza bow on the corner of the topper. A simple peel-off sentiment completes the card.

2 of those!

I've spent the morning measuring and cutting to make these 2 notebooks. The 'hearts' one is a Thank You gift and the other is part of a Birthday gift for 5 year old.
I added a charm and ribbons to the adult one and lots of bright coloured pages for the childs.They were very quick and easy to make as the front covers are postcards from Ikea cut down to a 10x15 cm size with a backer and pages to fit, all bound with my BIA.
I've got to find a padded bag now to fit the thank you gift into then off to the Post Office.

My Birthday cards

These are all the lovely hand crafted cards I received for my birthday last Sunday.

Thank You so much to everyone who took the time to make a card for me, I really appreciate the effort put into them.I had to smile when I opened Keren's card as I had used the same image for her birthday which is just the day before mine. I hope none of you mind me displaying your cards for all to see but as most of you have blogs of your own I thought it ok to show your lovely creations on mine.

All of my presents from family and friends have been crafty ones so I am very lucky to have people who know my likes so well.

2 for 1

This week on Cute Card Thursday the subject is 'Back to School'

I made the toppers for these 2 cards yesterday and just finished them. They are for my 2 Grandaughters. The youngest starts 'proper' school on her 5th birthday next week and the eldest moves up to Junior school. The stamped image is from Paper Nation and has been coloured with Promarkers and cut using Nesties. The oval has been coloured on the edges with purple or red ink to match the backer which is from a pad I have had for ages, think it's a sizzix one. The other backer is card put through a Cuttlebug embossing folder, again with inked edges. The greeting is a silver peel-off.

Crafter's Companion #5

On the Crafter's Companion challenge blog this week we have been asked to use blue as the main colour while still following a sketch.
This is Tina's sketch for us to follow. This is my card using backing paper printed from the Cute Companions cd and a stamp from the Popcorn Bear Christmas collection.
Sleepy little Souffle has been stamped onto lemon card with Grey Versafine ink and coloured with watercolour pencils. The image and blue backer have been cut with tag shaped Nesties and layered up at an angle to each other.
The peel-off greeting is on an oval cut with Nesties. 5 small blue self adhesive gems finish off the card.

Teen Terrors!

Over on the Tilda and Friends ATC Challenge site the theme this week is Teen Terrors.

This is my contribution, the first time i've taken part as until I really looked at the site this morning didn't realise that the images didn't need to be Tildas.

The stamp is Oliver Cool from Lili of the Valley. The shirt is paper pieced and the rest of him is coloured with polychromos and sansodor. The shirt and backing papers are from the citrus pad by HOTP. The wording is made from peel-off letters.

Anniversary wishes

It was our 35th Wedding Anniversary earlier in the month, this is the card I made for Mick using Popcorn Bear Floral cd. I've printed the image onto cream pearlescent paper and decoupaged the layers with foam pads.

This is on a background of spotty vellum from Making Cards magazine which has been held in place at the corners with a touch of glue covered with a self adhesive pink gem.
The border is from the same cd and the greeting is a peel-off. All on an A5 cream card.

Mum's birthday

My Mum's birthday is today and this is the card I made for her using papers and my adaptation of an idea from the July issue of Making Cards magazine. All I added apart from the white card base was some pink card and silver mirror board for layering and some pink self adhesive gems.

Making Cards is the only magazine I regularly buy as the papers and vellums given free each month are such good quality and there are usually some super card ideas to go with them. I try to make at least 2 cards from each issue and as I do so come up with more ideas of my own. It is nice to have a starting point though to begin with.

Crafter's Companion #4

On the Crafter's Companion challenge blog this week Christine has provided the sketch which also asks for brads and some ribbon. I've used an image from Popcorn Floral cd again simply cut out and mounted up onto pale green card.
The card is ready embossed from DCWV and i've just edged it with purple ink as I have with the 2 backing pieces. I've used my still favourite combination of purple and green, with a touch of white and lemon in the flower and glittered brad. Purple brads are on the corners of the image topper and a silver greetings peel-off.

Faith

I've just printed out a few photos of Faith's baking session back in April to put in her scrapbook of things she does while she is with us.

I don't proclaim to be a 'scrapbooker' as many crafters would see it but it's my way of keeping together a few memories for Faith of when she is staying with us. She loves looking at her 'princess book' as she calls it.

I think these are my favourite pages.

Don't you just love the pout on this one though! It had to be saved for her to look back on.
She was a devil for finding and using lipstick when she was smaller - even Grandad got covered on one occasion.

Wedding wishes

For this I used a combination of stamping and printed images both on pearlescent paper.
The A5 card is cream pearlescent and has silver mirror board layered onto it. The backer is from the Artylicious filigree Cd by Elusive Images. I shrunk it down to an A5 size.
The stamped hearts and sentiment are from the same people, from their With Love set of unmounted stamps.
They are stamped in pearl grey ink by Colour Box. Tiny beads in grey and pale pink have been attached to each heart.
Not a great photo for this one which is a pity as the pearlescent paper is really lovely in real life.

I've just re-placed this with what appears to be a slightly better image.

New Home Bear

This card is made entirely from the Popcorn Bear Floral Cd by Crafter's Companion. Popcorn looking through the window seemed appropriate for a new home card.

The backer is printed on ordinary copier paper while the twisted pyrimage is printed on cream pearlescent paper to give a lovely soft sheen to the image. Its 6 layers are mounted up on foam tape so luckily it doesn't have to go through the post. All mounted onto an A5 hammered cream card.

Again re-placed by a slightly better image which does at least show the sheen of the pearescent paper a little.

Crafter's Companion challenge #3

Again this week, on the Crafter's Companion blog, a sketch to be followed along with a touch of sparkle or gems. I was lucky enough to see a demo of the Popcorn Bear cd's by Crafter's Companion the other weekend and bought the floral one. The main image and the lovely sunflower backing papers are taken from it. I've glittered the centres of the flowers and layered Popcorn onto a piece of lemon glitter board.

The ovals with large sunflowers have been cut using scalloped oval nesties layered onto pale green card in turn layered onto small sunflowers paper. All this layered up onto pale green cardstock with a peel-off greeting.

This has been stuck onto a lovely bright yellow A5 card.

My Canvas

This is my canvas prepared in the same way as Faith's with a pale green base coat. It measures about 7x9.5 inches.

I'm quite pleased with it for a first try but, ever critical of myself, I feel the Paisley designs could be angled better and the flowers spaced differently at the bottom. I know now I should have used acetate instead of card for the stencils so that I could see better where they were being placed.

I made the stencil using Paisley images from the computer and painted them with Brilliance ink. They were decorated them with swirls and spots using Stampin' Up marker pens, although they don't show up too well in the picture.

Seed beads were stitched all around the outline of the design between the small dots.

Thank goodness for the flexibility of beading needles but it does help to try and thread the right end no matter how miniscule the hole!!

I used a Cuttlebug die to make myself a small flower/leaf stencil and used pink and green Brilliance inks.

The flowers here are Primas with a small brad in the centre.These flowers are fabric ones from W H Smith. They have been trimmed a little at the back so that they sit flatter on the canvas and attached with Pin Flair glue.

The ribbon round the edge is from Hobbycraft.In reality the painted images are all slightly shimmery due to the inks used. I'm not sure what I am going to do with mine, probably hang it in my craft room once we have decorated as the colours are what I would want in there.

Faith's Canvas

I bought a couple of canvases several years ago and never did anything with them so this week while we have Faith I let her decorate one while I did the other.

I did the initial preparation for her by painting it a couple of times with a pale green tester pot of emulsion paint and leaving it to dry overnight.

Apart from help in holding the flower and heart stencils in place and glueing the ribbon around the edges it is all her own work. I think she has done a very good job of it.

She has used a few stencils with Brilliance inks and painted designs with a shimmery paint. Then she got a bit carried away with the glitter glue although it did come in handy to help disguise the part where a stamped flourish didn't quite work.

Fabric and paper flowers were held together with brads and glued into place. The raised cream colored spots are Pebeo gloss touch paint.

She inked round the edges as she has seen me do with a finger dauber dabbed onto the inkpad.

She is going to take it home with her to give to her Mum.