Pop up Butterfly

 

Hello!

Welcome to my little crafting place! 

Here's where I share the things I've been making, and sometimes other bits of waffle!

Today I'm sharing the card I've made for Shabneez's challenge to the Daring Cardmakers challenge this week - and over on the Daring Blog you can meet our talented new Guest Designer!

Butterflies & Bees

I love to see the butterflies and bees busy around the garden!

So let’s celebrate the bees and the butterflies we’ve seen over the summer.
Use one or the other or both on your cards this week!

Visit the Daring Cardmakers Blog

 

I thought it was about time I used this die set which was actually a Christmas present!  It makes a pretty pop up butterfly, and that's what you find when you open the card.

For the outside though I used a butterfly from the same collection, a really old filigree trellis die. and a quite old leafy branch die - all from Spellbinders, though the last couple are not available in the shop now.  It shos how much I love my Spellbinders die collection, and how even the old ones stay on my favourites list!

The background paper is a digital design (also a favourite)  and inside I used a leafy stencil with inks and mousse blue and green colours

The butterfly layers are cut from pearl and glitter card.

 

Note

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  THIS is my Affiliate Link to the Spellbinders store 

-  you can use it to access the store whenever you buy from Spellbinders

It doesn't cost you anything, but I may get a little reward for pointing you there.

There's a UK based shop now, so you c use the 'Visit Our UK Store' button at the top right of any page on the Spellbinders site  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you so much for coming by.

 

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself,

Kathy xx

Experience Spellbinders

 

Lucky Numbers

 

Hello!

Welcome to my little crafting place! Here's where I share the things I've been making, and sometimes other bits of waffle!

Today I'm sharing the card I've made for Rozwana's challenge to the Daring Cardmakers challenge this week:

 

Lucky Numbers

This weeks challenge is nice and simple!
Just create a card with one or more numbers on it!
Maybe for a special occasion like a birthday or an anniversary. For a Little 'Un about to start school. Or perhaps a 'Well Done' for someone who's just passed their maths exam!

 

The two youngest members of our family celebrate their second birthdays in the next few weeks, so this was the perfect opportunity to get a card ready for the first of them!

I started with a bit of work on the pc, choosing a good font for my number '2'. I resized to fit my card then printed it out. Next I fixed it to a piece of card with paper clips (as I might want to use it again and forgot to save it oops!) and cut it out. If I'd remembered to save it, I'd have glued it to the reverse of my piece of card - checking to make sure it would be the right way around when cut out, of course!

Number 2 is a nice easy number to cut out with scissors - I'd think twics for some numerals!

Next I glued it onto coloured   cardstock and cut that out too. The card itself was swooshed all over with pale blue and pale aqua shades of mousse for a varigated, shimmery finish, then I glued the number in position, keeping the glue away from the edges so I could tuck die cuts under. later.

I think the die sets used are by First Edition, but I've lost the cover - they are Baby Girl and Baby Boy sets though.  I've cut them using a pacl of card that was a match for an old Graphic 45 paper pack

  

 I'm planning to add some Glossy Accents to at least some of the balloons but I didn't have time to do that and let it dry before needing the photos!

Thank you so much for coming by.

 

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself,

Kathy xx

 

 

Vintage House and Home

  Hello!

Welcome to my little crafting place! Here's where I share the things I've been making, and sometimes other bits of waffle!

This week I managed to make a second card for the Daring Cardmakers challenge:

House and Home

Just use the phrase to inspire your crafting this week!  
Perhaps a house, bungalow, apartment....igloo?
An animal's home - nest, hutch, den?
You could make a New Home card.  
Or go inside & feature a room, or something usually found indoors
such as a sofa, desk television, food mixer....

Wherever the phrase "House and Home" takes you, we'd love to see!

Unable to use my die cutter while OH was on a call, I was browsing through the stuff that might come in useful one day (son't tell me you don't have a good boxful of it too!) and came across the bag of tiny vintage postcards that appear on my blog occasionally, alongside some altered photo frame things, which at some point I'd embossed and coloured. Most were pretty colours but one was brown and I thought would make a picture frame for the sweet wedding photograph.

I cut into the frame's aperture to make a bigger, squarer space that would fit the picture, then coated with glue and added some gold gilding flakes.  Once dry I brushed off the excess and a bit more, to give a more distressed appearance. The picture was added and some gold twine for the hanger.

Also in the box I found a K&Co mini album kit I've never got round to using.  The vintage colours and designs would be perfect for a wallpaper background.  The upper section of the card was lighlty inked for a rag-rolled effect. then a strip of a matching design for the 'dado' rail.  The cute little layered embellishment was also in the book kit and seemed the perfect match for the picture.

 

 Very different from mu usual makes, I think, but I quite like to break out occasionally! Checking through that box of 'stuff' is always a good idea, both to refesh my memory of what's in there and to spark some inspiration!

 

 

Thank you so much for coming by.

 

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself,

Kathy xx

House and Home

 

 Hello!

Welcome to my little crafting place! Here's where I share the things I've been making, and sometimes other bits of waffle!

Friday is Daring Cardmakers Day and this week the challenge is:

House and Home

Just use the phrase to inspire your crafting this week!  
Perhaps a house, bungalow, apartment....igloo?
An animal's home - nest, hutch, den?
You could make a New Home card.  
Or go inside & feature a room, or something usually found indoors
such as a sofa, desk television, food mixer....

Wherever the phrase "House and Home" takes you, we'd love to see!

I bought a'a few' wax seal stampers from 'Hey Little Magpie' a few weeks back and thought this challenge would be a good opportunity to use one of them on a card.  What I love about HLM is that you can buy just the stamp head - having accumulated more of the handles than I'll ever need (in most cases stamps and handles are interchangeable so you don't need a handle for each stamp), I'm very happy not to get any more!

 

 

 

 The houses are tiny - less than 2 cms tall, and I made them by first pouring the lilac/aqua/blue wax to the stamp and cutting these out,  Next I heated red wax for the roof, replaced the house shape into the stamp and poured a little wax into the roof area and a little over the house shape to join the two sections together.  I just used scissors to cut away any excess wax.

For the little frames I used four layers of white card - the same as the card itself.  I've found that if I glue two layers together my die cutter is happy to cut through simple dies like these nested squares, which means they are more stable when you stick the next double frame on top

 

The three frames were added to the card, then the houses adhered with wax seal sricky circles cut down to fit.  I just hand cut the trees, then added a simple sentiment.  I managed to stop myself adding anything else (it's always hard, you know!)  because I actually liked the simplicity of the design

  

 

Thank you so much for coming by.

 

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself,

Kathy xx

Summer Lovin’

 

 Hello!

Welcome to my little crafting place! Here's where I share the things I've been making, and sometimes other bits of waffle!

Friday is Daring Cardmakers Day and this week it's me choosing the challenge.

Summer Lovin’

Do your thoughts turn to love, hearts, kisses & lovey-dovey things in Summer? Having needed two Wedding Anniversary cards last month my crafting has been full of hearts and kisses and ‘lovey-dovey’ things! 

But there's so much to love about Summer - lovely long (hopefully) sunny days, barbeques and picnics or long lazy lunches in the garden of your favourite pub!There are trips to the beach or lakeside and other favourite places to go, or if you're lucky packing your bags and heading off on holiday. 

Or seeing your garden in full bloom, and maybe enjoying the fruit and vegetables you've grown all by yourself!So, let’s celebrate Summer Love this week - for the people and things we care the most for - or all the things you love about a glorious Summer day.

Making an anniversary card for Hubby  is always a bit tricky for me - I have no idea why I find it so hard though!

I think I try too hard and should just keep it simple, but once I start sticking things together any plan to do that disappears!

Anyway I wanted to get away from my usual colours and when I found these fab digitals from Digi Treats I really wanted to use them.  Not really sure they're to Hubby's taste, but I just couldn't resist!

I was soreing through my box of 'kept' cards the other day andcame across a pocket card with a diagonal opening and thought it would be fun to make another

What I don't like about this kind of card is that you need to prop them up as they don't open in the conventional way - so I always add a fold out stand to the back of the pocket so that they can be displayed standing. 

I printed my chosen paper designs directly onto card so that I could simply cut and fold the pocket and the insert. The sentiments als came from Digi Treats and I added some colour in Paint Shop Pro to match those in the papers, I resized them to fit the insert before printing.

I loved this Key to my Heart one and was fairly sure I'd got some key chamrs in my 'Mwtal Things' box (yes, I really do have one), The lovely heart charm came from the same box.

The  sentiment in the heart at the top was a bit fiddly to get right and took a couple of goes before I finally managed to get to the right size to fit.  I used scrap pieces from the paper to make little 'potted hearts' to add to it and punched a few tiny hearts to add too

I used silver thread to attach them and added some waxed twine to prettify!

The pocket was decorated with matching card strips with a EK Success border punch edge and a piece of turquois ribbon tied around and knotted at the side

Thank you so much for coming by.

 

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself,

Kathy xx

 

Pink and Grey for August

 

 Hello!

Welcome to my little crafting place! Here's where I share the things I've been making, and sometimes other bits of waffle!

Friday is Daring Cardmakers Day and this week Shabneez gas chosen the August moodboard to inspire us

  August Elemental Inspiration

It's Shabneez here and as it's the first Friday in the month it is the elemental challenge for the month this week. 

 You can choose any three elements you like from the image above and as usual the colour palette count as one element.

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The grey colours with the pink is so far away from any colour palette I've usec lately that I had to stick with that as my first element, then there are flowers, so they had to be on my card. Element three was going to be a butterfly - but I had a change of plan there as you can see.

I wanted to make a stencilled background and when I looked through my folder I found this striped one by Funky Fossil and thought it echoed the bars of the birdcage so used it with two shades of pink Nuvo mousse and then a careful 'wipe' of black ink (I didn't want it to be too dark and I don't have a grey ink pad)

As I was putting the folder away I spotted one from The Crafters Workshop that I'd forgotten about.  It has three birdcages hangiong from a branch so I masked off all but one of the cages and stencilled that in black.  

At this point I was ready to di some die cutting but OH was working and on what seemed to be a never-ending  call, so I decided to make rolled roses and hope that by the time I'd made enough, he'd have finished! I coloured thin card with a couple of shades of pink mousse, then hand cut the spirals to make the roses. I still had to wait for his call to finish! But eventually, after I'd sat a while with the card and dies in the plates ready to go his call ended!

The lovely leafy sprig is an old die set from Spellbinders, it's no longer available from the store, but its one of those that comes in useful time and time again! I spend a small fortune on new dies, but love to use the old ones too!

Once I'd got the sprigs and the flowers added, I chose a black and white sentiment and added a few gems to finish.

 

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Just a Note

If you buy from Spellbinders and you're happy to help out a crafty

 friend with a stash addiction...

  HERE is my Affiliate Link to the Spellbinders store - you can use it to access the store any time, and I'd really appreciate it if you did, don't worry, it doesn't cost you anything!

There's a UK based shop now, so you can use the 'Visit Our UK Store' button at the top right of any page on the Spellbinders site  

******

Thank you so much for coming by.

 

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself,

Kathy xx