Cascade

 

Hello!

This one has been sitting in Blogger for a few weeks, waiting for me to get round to adding some text.

It's a cascade card, made to celebrate the 90th birthday of  brass banding gentleman.  

Cascade cards are made with two 'wedge' shaped pieces of card,  linked together so that the card folds flat, but when the folds are pulled open you get the cascade effect which is fun to decorate with die cuts etc

 You can find instructions on the basic Cascade fold card by doing a quick search on the internet so I won't give them here.

 Info

The card for the base is blue Bazzill and I found some music notes themed download papers on Etsy which I used to cover the various panels before adding the die cuts.

I've used various die sets from Paper Discovery and DoCrafts (Xcut) for the brass instruments and the other musical notation die cuts.

 

I had a lot of fun putting this together and it was much easier to do than it looks - which is always a good thing, isn't it!

 That's all for today, thank you so much for visiting, I hope you'll leave a comment, I do love to read them!

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe,

 

 

Carnations for Carol - Spellblogging for Spellbinders

Hello there!

Thank you for joining me for another Weekend Spellblogging post for Spellbinders

This week I've used some gorgeous dies, both new and old to create a very special birthday card.
This is a commissioned card for a customer who has a friend celebrating her 90th birthday - what a great excuse to be extravagant with flowers and flourishes!

Info
I used a smooth white card blank matted with green card to begin with.
Next I arranged three of the dies from
Victorian Garden Romantic Vines  Shapeabilities  Etched Dies set onto a piece of Diamond Bling card so that they made a pretty border in the lower right corner.
Once they were cut, I matted the white square onto my card so that the lovely green shows through the die cut areas 
I inked up the gorgeous leaf and flourish shapes that had been cut out in a toning shade of green to use under the flowers.
The lovely flowers are created with the Carnation Creations set by Donna Salazar.  I used Foamiran to make all three flowers.  This product is a very thin foam which is easy to shape into the most beautiful flowers - and there are lots of fabulous Spellbinders dies which are perfect to use to cut the shapes you need!

I created the sentiment on the computer and used a circle punch to cut it out, then matted onto this lovely flower doily shape from
Moroccan Accents Shapeabilities Etched Dies To finish, I tucked pieces of the inked flourishes under the flowers, added a little ribbon bow, some pearl strands and a few flat backed pearls in the corner. 


Victorian Garden Romantic Vines  Shapeabilities  Etched Dies

 
Carnation Creations  Donna Salazar Shapeabilities  Etched Dies

Moroccan Accents Shapeabilities Etched Dies

All of these dies are by Spellbinders

That's all for today, so thanks for visiting, if you click on This Link  you'll find yourself at the Spellbinders store where you will find more temptation than you've ever dreamed of ;)
And you can get your hands on these lovely die sets, of course!!
Just before I sign off - please take a little peek at my sidebar, where you'll see an advance message about a bit of fun my fellow Spellbloggers have cooked up along with the lovely people at Spellbinders

Happy Crafting

 

Curvy!

I thought it was about time I did a midweek blog - I've fallen back into the bad old ways of only managing to do my DCM card blog post.  Must try harder.

So now that the special birthday this card was made for has come and gone I can share the photos.
This is a commissioned card and it has a curved, or bowed front (like an old-fashioned shop window), What with the depth of the card because of the bowed front and the rather extravagant flower set into the aperture I decided not to risk the Postie squishing it before  it even reached my customer, and made a box for it too.

Tools and Materials

All papers are from Funky Hand's beautiful

Wash It All Away download, 

printed onto white Bazzill card for texture and a nice weight

The front of the card is created using the "Extravagance" Create-a-Card die from Crafter's Companion

Plain Oval and Labels die are Spellbinders

The peony flower was made using petals cut on the Silhouette Cameo

Other items used: Cream card blank, flat backed pearls, satin ribbon

I made the box using WRMK Envelope Punch Board, and added a "belly band" to keep it shut, there's space on the label on the back to add a message
I used more of the same papers to decorate the box.  The flower is cut with an SU punch, the centre is a plain punched circle with a layer of Glossy Accents and a few beads sprinkled in while still wet

That's it for this time, I hope you like this project and will leave a little message ;)

Thanks for looking

Welcome Baby

I love this cute elephant image from Funky Hand and have used it to make a fair few cards since it appeared on the Colour Me Happy CD a few years ago now. 
It's great to use as a fun Get Well Soon card and I've often used it as with this one, to welcome a new baby.  For some reason I always seem to make a shaped card with this image. maybe because it's such a clean, simple design - perfect for someone who isn't particularly neat at cutting out!

This one is about A5 size, made for the folks at Hubby's office to sign and send when one of the team welcomed baby no 3 to their family.

To begin with I printed the spotty patterned paper directly onto a sheet of A4 card, using the "fir to page" option, I turned the card over and chose a plainer design to print on what would be the inside of my card, using the same setting.
Next I cropped the flower design so that there were just a few of the flowers and resized so that each flower would be about 6cm across - this was just done by guesswork.  Again I printed the reverse using a plainer design.
Print job no 3 was to resize the spotty pattern so that it just took up half a sheet of the same A4 card -
The final printing task was to select the elephant image and "put" it onto the workspace on the CD, then expand the image to fill as much as possible of the lower half of the workspace.  As the full workspace is equivalent to a piece of A4 you can get a good idea how big the print will be.
This was printed and used as a cutting template for the elephant.

I cut around the paper copy of the elephant leaving a little margin all around the edge, then folded the A4 card in half and paper-clipped the paper copy in place - making sure to have the top lying above the fold so that you don't end up with just two, un-joined elephant shapes ;)

I used the A5 piece with the smaller dots just to cut out the head section and glued in place leaving the ear section unstuck, and also the part of the trunk where the ends of the wires will be hidden and sealed safely away

Then I used some black card just to cut the eyelashes piece from the template

For the flowers I cut around a couple of the flower shapes and punched some 1.5cm circles from some of the spare card for the flower centres, and some slightly larger circles to cover the ends of the wire on the reverse.
If you like using card candy, but end up being over-run by packets of the stuff,  try making your own, perfectly matching, in-the-size-you-want candy: Use craft punches, die cuts  (lots of dies have circles as part of the die cut) etc to cut the circle you need, from exactly the part of a design you want to use (like the spotty one in the centre of the green flower), next simply rub an embossing ball tool on the reverse to create the domed shape.

The wires are twirled around a bamboo skewer, leaving a few cms at each end  plain  for fixing in place. I'm a bit paranoid about  making sure the ends are all made into tight, flat spirals (using pliers) and glued into pieces of paper or card  before they are attached to the project - then I add a "cover" of a piece of card to keep everything in place and tidy.  On the trunk of this project the wire are concealed and glued with a strong glue inside the two layers of card.

Finally I made a little notice for the elephant to hold by printing the sentiment, cutting it out at an angle and adding it  to another piece of scrap card.  The ribbon bow just hides and neatens where the wires go inside the elephant's trunk sections.

I used:

Elephant Image from Colour Me Happy CD

Paper designs from Colour Me Happy CD

300gsm white card

Black Bazzill

Green wire

Very narrow pink ribbon

Thank you so much for coming to visit today - I hope you like my little elephant.

A Christening Card

My card today is a Christening card made for one of my customers.
As you probably realise by now (haha) I've been using the new Funky Hand Christmas downloads a LOT recently, so that file is often open on my pc.  Rather than go on a paper hunt for suitable things to use, it just seemed  obvious really to open the blue collection;  "Winter Wonderland" and see if I could use them for a non-Cword card.
This is how it turned out

I just LOVE downloads as they allow you so much scope to play around with them - which is what I've done to create the base "layer" of colour on this card.
To begin with I did a bit of on-screen editing to make one of the "textured" designs into a perfect square.  I resized this to 13x13 cm sq, then positioned it so that it would print with a border onto a sheet of A4.  Once printed I folded and cut the card down to make a card with a 0.5cm border all around the printed square.
I then used a couple of the other designs to make the layers and shapes for the rest of the card. I try to always use the same paper or card to print on for any particular project to ensure that the printing quality and colour stays the same.  Different papers print in different ways so mixing designs printed on card and paper may not look uniform - better to stick to one type per project.

Materials and Tools

Papers: "Winter Wonderland" from Funky Hand

 Lace and Ribbon from  Creative Treasures

Baby feet, Teddy and Cross charms from "A Charming Place" (USA), Silver thread for attaching

Small silver brads

Sentiment printed onto plain white card

2cm circle punch

Quite a simple card, really, but I hope those concerned will like it.
Thanks for visiting
 

Join in with "a Card a Day Blogging" by leaving a message on the post below this one, or by linking up with our Facebook group

No Fuss

The BFoP is in residence and trying to divert me from making my DCM card for this week.  Or maybe I'm just doing other things while another part of my brain tries to work out what to do?

Anyway, one of the things I procrastinated about long and hard recently was making a First Holy Communion card for a customer.  In the end here's what I came up with

Materials:

Card base:  Rose Pink Stardream card with soft shimmery finish. 

Other card; White and Silver

White Lace and White satin ribbon

Silver cross charm hung on silver thread with pearl beads,

Chalice cut on Craft Robo in Silver card and decorated with tiny silver gems

Sentiment is pc generated

The "Boss" at Funky Hand has recently moved house so I made this card, using pretty much the same LO as for last week's DCM card (the Santa one!)

Materials:

White card base, Funky Hand papers (pink and brown)

Lots of brown and soft pink seam binding

Little house is one of my most used Craft Robo templates

I-Rock pearls by Imaginisce

Well. I've managed to get all the way to lunch time without starting that card, so the BFoP is probably feeling very pleased with herself - but she's getting the Order of the Boot after lunch - yes I mean it!

Thanks for visiting. please come back soon :-)

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

How does your garden grow?

It's the first Friday of the month and if you're a Daring Cardmaker that means it's Flowers of the Month time.

 Two real beauties for June;  Rose and Honeysuckle

In my garden the honeysuckle bloomed a few weeks ago and the flowers are now gone.  We only have a couple of rose bushes and the one against the pergola is in full flower right now - there's a photo of a couple of roses on my previous post

I thought that I could combine the challenge with a wedding card I need for a customer.  The wedding is in June, so I what better to use than the flowers associated with that month? Well, ok maybe a bit contrived but you've got to take the chance of a 2 in 1 when it's offered, hehe.

I used

Cream "Stardream" pearlised card blank, 

Pink, Lemon and Cream Bazzill card

EK Success border punch, Pinky-burgundy ribbon, Leaf trim, 

Wired pearl sprays,

Roses: 3 x wired roses (deep pink, pastel pink, yellow) 

2 x coiled paper roses (Pink, Lemon Bazzill scraps), 

1 x larger rose made from lemon card, edged with pink and highlighted with Glamour Dust and Glossy Accents "raindrops"

Honeysuckle: templates for flower components made using mainly pre-set shapes in Paint Shop Pro then cut on Craft Robo, 

Dusty pink and yellow inks, tiny pink gems from Anita's gem wheel

I really enjoyed making this card, it's always a joy to be working with paper flowers and to have an excuse like this was fab!

I hope my customer and the wedding couple like what I've made for them.

It's a real Garden of Delights over on the DCM BLOG this week, so please pop over to see all the wonderful flowery creations the team have come up with.  We're hoping you'll be inspired to join in and play along with us this week.

Last week I mentioned that the card I shared wasn't the one I started out making and abandoned half-way.  Well I did go back and finish it, but I'm still not very happy with it - but it's good not to add something else to the "it was a good idea when I started it" pile of unfinished and unloved projects!

See what you think:

I love the shape of the shoe, and I love the papers.  The shoe wasn't stable enough to make a completely shoe-shaped card so I needed to have a "regular" card back - that was when it all started to go wrong as I couldn't find a background style I was happy with.

There's Glamour Dust all over the heel and around the shoe "upper" and the glittery effect is much nicer irl - not as splodgy as it looks on the photos.

I used:

Stella and Rose papers throughout, Handmade rosette and tassels, 

pink flower is made by cutting in to the centre of a Prima flower then twirling it up rather like making a coiled rose. 

Wired acrylic and bead flower, green dew drops,

Green and pink seam binding (Creative Treasures sell a massive range)

EK Success Border Punch

That's all for today, thanks for visiting

Other Challenges:
CRAFT: Weddings/Love
MAWTT No Patterned Papers
By the Cute and Girly: In the Garden
Cupcake Craftroom: Flowers and Leaves

Get Well Soon

I'm still struggling to find any crafting mojo.  I was hoping that having a few "got to be done" projects would kick-start me into action but it's not really working.

Anyway, here's the Get Well Soon card I made for a chap at hubby's office - following a virus he caught recently, he's developed a very rare syndrome which has left him in hospital being poked and prodded by medical students, and it could be several months before he's well again. 

This is a chunky old card - a whopping 8 inches square  well, it's huge for me anyway.  Maybe I'm trying to feel less panicked by big spaces hehe

 If you think you've seen something like this before, well, you have - I used the same basic idea to make my cousin's "I' don't do birthdays" card last year. I thought having all those Med students investigating him he'd be looking just like this little guy!

For this version I've used:

All papers are from MME "True Blue" 6x6 pad (there's no real blues in it though....)

Brown grosgrain ribbon, Fibres for hair, Googly eyes, faux brads, 

Sentiment and mat are cut using my Craft Robo

Thanks for popping by today,

Bon Voyage.....

I finally finished the "emigrating to Australia" card I've been wittering on about needing to do for ages! I'm not sure why it took so long to actually get done, but I'll blame the after-Christmas lack of mojo.

I used some clipart to make the Robo template of the Australia-shaped flag, it worked pretty well, even if some of the red bits on the flag were rather skinny and easy to lose....hmmm!  Never mind, got there in the end.  I used the Cuttlebug Stars embossing folder for the white background but it doesn't show up on the photo - of and the brad on the bottom right is a red and white one, not at all pink as it looks here!

Materials and Equipment:
Bazzill cardstock, red, blue and white

Aussie flag paper from Craftz Boutique, Long red pin (Creative Treasures) with red ribbon , beads and pc generated banner , Brads are a mix of shapes and designs in red, white and blue , Craft Robo template, Cuttlebug Stars embossing folder

I seem to have been making New Baby cards a lot recently - I'll show them on here eventually ;) but something I can share is this little box. Inside is a tiny, baby-sized TT t-shirt. We bought it when we were on the IOM back in October ready for when the baby of one of hubby's motorbike-loving workmates arrived.

 Materials etc:

Handmade box covered with papers by Little Yellow Bicycle. Bow made with lots of lengths of ribbon (I have a huge reel of this stuff), Large blue button, Stork charm from Creative Treasures, Nesties Die for tag

I had a bit of a disaster while making this.  The little box I keep reels of thread and wire in "jumped" off the shelf above my desk - I caught it before it landed, but what I didn't realise till later was that the reel of my favourite very fine silver thread escaped - and landed in the open pot of bookbinding glue I was using......! I will leave your imagination to picture the mess hehehe

Just finished my DCM card ready for tomorrow - if you'd like to see that, plus the state of my desk by the time it was finished, please come back tomorrow!  As I write this I'm trying to decide which of the things on my list I should tackle next.....Thank you for visiting, please leave a comment - it's always great to read them

First WOYWW in Ages

The Bad Fairy of Procrastination is sitting on my shoulder this week.  I have loads to do but so far I'm getting nowhere.  Once I've done this blog post I really really will get on with some crafting.  Deadlines approach so quickly, don't they?  

Okay, so I'll probably make a coffee once I'd done this BUT THEN I'll start the crafting.  I really will.....

I thought it was time I joined in with Julia's desk-sharing fun again - especially as I had a bit of a tidy up yesterday afternoon (yes, I was procrastinating then, too).  It must be the first time in at least 3 months that I've seen the surface of the desk.   Photos can be clicked on for a closer look!

 As we've had the spare room set up as another guest room over Christmas and New Year I moved my little photo studio into the study, next to my craft desk.  I'm wondering whether to leave it there or whether it's going to be in the way too much.  Anyway, as it's here atm I thought I'd add a photo of that too.  I started off with some small lamps and the studio cube in the photo and used the whole studio just on the floor.  The lamps and cube were upgraded for my birthday but as the new cube is HUGE I'm still using the old one most of the time.  Besides the new one is one of those tent things which you can get up easily enough, but flattening them again is a skill - which I've not learned yet :0

 To finish with, here's one of the few cards I've managed to make lately.  It's a commissioned card for a little girl.  Mr Mojo is AWOL just now so I fell back on the circles teddy to make this one.

 I used:

sei papers, Gingham ribbon, Glitter card in pink and yellow, Various Prima flowers, Sentiment is pc generated, Circles and child's name are cut with Craft Robo

Hopefully I'll get around lots of the WOYWW links and see what everyone is up to this week.  Hopefully too, I'll actually get a couple of things ticked off that crafty to-do list....

Thanks for popping by today, please visit again soon

Still coughing...

I'm still feeling rough and spending a lot of time under the duvet and not a lot either on the pc or at my craft desk.  H.work is pretty much limited to throwing something simple together for dinner as I'm too tired and wobbly to do much else.  When I was little I had a teddy bear who's seams grew a bit threadbare and his stuffing started to come out.  I feel as though my stuffing is escaping - especially from my knees! hehe

Having got the plea for sympathy out of the way (and this rotten cold, plus a trip to the Outlaws on the IOM last w/e are my excuses, nay, reasons! for not doing much blog visiting lately) I do have stuff made before our trip  that I can share on here.  Just as well as the only crafting I've managed this week is my DCM card for tomorrow - and thank goodness that went together without a hitch as I don't have any patience when I'm feeling ill.

The Crafty Templates  cards on my last post were made a week or two ago and this wedding anniversary card is part of an order I spoke of a while back and haven't got round to blogging yet

 I made this type of pocket card for hubby on our own anniversary and when I bought the GCD (Paris Nights" papers I knew they'd be fab to use for this commissioned card.  The swirly design I've used on the lower section of the pocket is flocked and very lush!  Perfect for something romantic like an anniversary. I made the pocket section so that it can stand on it's own rather than needing propping up against something.

I love the idea of a pull out section - lovely for a secret, romantic message, eh?

I used:

All papers from the GCD Paris Nights 8x8 pad

Dusty Pink ribbon, pale pink heart gems.  Coiled roses made with scraps of the same papers

Sentiment is cut with Craft Robo

Now for a Funky Hand  Update!

Anice issued the Funky Hand team with a bit of a challenge a few weeks back - she asked us to make Christmas cards using papers from the two Papercraft factory CDs "Dreams Come True" and "Colour Me Happy".  This was all to do with the up and coming TV show on Create and Craft.

Anice will be on your screen this Saturday morning  (30th October) at 11am with lots of ideas for the two CDs - and there will be a very special deal, available only from Create and Craft if you buy the two CDs together - we're not allowed to tell you what the special price is - you have to watch the show for that!

Anyway, here are a couple of the Christmas cards I made using some of the CMH and DCT papers, (hopefully they'll make an appearance on the show).  I've a couple more which I'll add next time

 Papers above are "Jovial Man" from the Colour Me Happy CD

I printed the background design direct onto the card then glued scraps of other designs onto thin card and hand cut tall triangles for the trees

Also used:

silver mirror card, plain white card, white and silver ribbon, 

punched or die-cut glitter card stars and snowflakes

The card below uses "Blue Magic" papers from Dreams Come True, plus the stocking shape from the 2009 Funky Hand digi image download "Festive Mix", which I resized and then converted to cut with the Craft Robo.  All the designs I've used here are from the same collection and I love the way these colours and patterns looks so Christmassy

Also used:

Silver crochet thread, sentiment Robo-cut from brown Bazzill card

I think we were all amazed at how many of the designs on the CD worked really well for Christmas projects even though that's not what they were intended for - and of course it's always good to add another great use for Funky Hand Stuff to the ever-growing list.  

If you tune in to the programme either on your TV or via your pc on Saturday you'll see just how much use you can get from the CDs for Christmas and you could bag a great deal too!

Right, time for the next lemsip and a gulp of the disgusting cough medicine....

A Birthday and a Wedding

Did you have a good weekend?  We didn't get up to anything exciting/interesting here, but did manage to do a few odd jobs such as bringing in the indoor plants that go our onto the patio for a Summer Holiday.  I really need to go out and fleece up the cordylines and palms that have just recovered from the battering last Winter gave them (we forgot to give them a fleecy blanket till it was a bit late!

We bought another set of ladders for our increasing collection as there was a piece of the ceiling over the stairs - it was only about 12x 24" that hubby couldn't reach form the set of multi-way ladders we'd already bought.  Mind you, I did say that next time the ceiling needs painting we get someone in to do it - I was a nervous wreck as even  balancing on these "proper" ladders seemed very dicey to me.

I told you it wasn't an exciting weekend hehe!

I did get loads of crafting done though, and have almost cleared my to-do list (at least for a while!).

 

But first for today I'm catching up as I made this one last week.  Alpha, the young Senegalese boy we sponsor through World Vision (please consider doing something like this if you possibly can, it makes such a difference to the lives of everyone in that child's village) has a birthday soon and as he's completely football mad I made this card for him

 

It's a variation on a card I made for Crafty Templates a couple of months ago using one of Leo's bunting templates.  Here I've added stars and alphabet stickers to the bunting and changed the wording to a simple Happy Birthday.  I've added a corner flag and a QK football to fill in the empty bits.  Wording and white lines/circle are cut using my Craft Robo.

Next is one of the weekend's crafting projects, something to tick off the to-do list

 I've been working on a couple of commissioned cards an this wedding card is the first of them.

I just adore this GCD 8x8 paper pad and can't stop using it!  

The papers are so lush!  Some are flocked, some are shimmery (like the dotty paper here) and they are all slightly textured, double sided and just gorgeous!

I used:

 Paris Nights Papers (GCD), Nesties Labels 9 die

Silk and feather flower and satin ribbon (John Lewis), Cream cotton lace, plain dark red brads covered with Burgundy Stickles,

Coiled roses: cream and black ones made with same paper, red version made with 

flocked paper (from stash)

Right, now I'm going to go and get the washing out of the machine before I forget, and do a few other housewifely chores.  If I get them all out of the way, I might even be able to start my next DCM card this afternoon - which as DCM day is Friday, and today is only Monday would be a bit of a shock all round!

Thanks for visiting, please leave a comment....