Christmas Robin

A lovely robin picture always makes a beautiful Christmas card.

This image is from the Walk in the Countryside CD-Rom from Creative Crafting World.  As the picture is so detailed I didn't really have to do much.  I used a gold mirricard mat and a greeting cut from the Tattered Lace Christmas Sentiments.

Christmas Tree

An 8x8in card.

I matted silver mirricard and a matt green onto a white base card and cut out 6 of the Chantilly Flourish dies by Tattered Lace, two of which I used the edge die with.

I used gilding flakes on the two with the edge die on, and arranged them to make a tree. The other four were left white and used as corners.  I cut a star, which I domed with glue and added gold glitter, and a piece of brown card, to represent a pot.  I finished by adding a sentiment, some red bows and some red jewels.

Christmas Plaque

I bought a painted plaque for next to nothing in a sale and up cycled it.

I began by giving the plaque a couple of coats of gesso to cover up the original design, and covered the front with a paper printed from a CD-Rom from Tattered Lace.  I cut the Winter Wishes, by Tattered Lace, from gold and red and offset them so that the gold gives a shadow effect.  The poinsettias and the ivy are cut from Britannia dies.

Snowman and Snowdog

Here are 2 examples of A6 cards made using the Snowman and Snowdog cutting dies from Crafter's Companion.  These dies were free, along with the embossing folder used, in their latest Inspiration magazine.  The Happy Christmas die was also a freebie from a magazine I bought last year.

More gift boxes

I've made some more gift boxes from the same CD-Roms used in my previous blog.  This time they are more a packet/pouch type.  I've added a ribbon cord to secure the packet and the gift tag is cut from a corresponding backing paper.

After making these I decided that a smaller size would be good, but how do I do it?  I played with my printer settings and found that if I put multiple items on a page (in this case 2) I could print them at half size.

These are so cute.

Octagonal gift boxes

I've been busy making gift boxes for Christmas.

These octagonal boxes were printed from two CD-Roms, A Walk in the Countryside and A Winter Walk in the Countryside, from Creative Crafting World.  The images are by an artist called Betty Davis and are absolutely stunning.

All I had to do was print them, cut them out, glue the pieces together and finish with a bow and handmade poinsettia (from Britannia die).

Red and gold stepper card

Another 8x8in Christmas card.

Crafter's Companion Die'sire Create-a-card 'Christmas Eve'
Couture Collection 'Winter Flurries' trim
Tattered Lace 'Winter Wishes' die
Gold mirricard
Red coredinations card
Gilding wax

Pink and white stepper

This is an 8x8in stepper card which could be used for Christmas or even for a winter birthday.

Items used:-  Diesire Create-a-card 'Christmas Present' by Crafter's Companion
                         Tattered Lace 'Winter Wishes' die
                         Couture Collection 'Winter Flurries' trim die
                         Pink and white Centura Pearl card
                         Silver mirri card
                         'Spun Sugar' Distress Ink

Christmas Easel

I've been busy paper crafting items for Christmas.  Here's an easel that I've put on my shelf at www.wigglywoocraftemporium.co.uk.  I like it so much that I really wanted to keep it.

Items used:- Large Pinflair easel
                        Paper from Tattered Lace magazine CD-Rom Vol. 2
                        Britannia Poinsettia dies
                        Britannia Ivy die
                        Tattered Lace Winter Wishes die (cut in gold and overlaid in red)
                        Pearls
                        Organza ribbon (tied using the Bowmaker)

Tiger

Here's a card that I made for my oldest brother.

The background is made from an embossing folder by Sheena Douglass.  I applied Versamark to the embossing folder and used a piece of black card.  When I had embossed the card the Versamark had transfered to the card between the embossed lines.  I covered this with gold embossing powder and heat embossed it. 

 The tiger is a stamp, also by Sheena.  I stamped it with black Staz-On and water-coloured with Spiced Marmalade and Forest Moss Distress Inks. 

I folded a piece of card into a stepper card so that the tiger stands forward from the background.

Autumn

Another beautiful image from a CD-Rom by Jayne Netley Mayhew.

I didn't need to add much to this card as the picture is stunning, and reminds me of this time of year.  All I did was layer the image onto two mats, which drew out the colours in the image, and added a greeting.

Blue pop-up box with roses

Today's project is another pop-up box (see 25th Aug for instructions), which could be used as a card or would make a lovely ornament.

This first image shows the pop-up box folded down to an A5 size, as it would be presented in a box. 

This image shows the pop-up box as it would be displayed.

I took panels of the Papermania Parisienne Blue Capsule Collection and inked around the edges with Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink.  I handmade the roses using the Britannia Small and Medium Rose dies. The leaves were also cut from Britannia dies.

We plough the fields

The card I want to showcase today is one that I made for my nephew
who is studying agriculture and working on a farm.

I started with a 6in square card, some white card and paper and a piece of gold mirri.
The picture consists of two stamps, both by Art Kure, and both stamped in Vintage Photo Distress Ink.  First, I stamped the image of the horses ploughing, masked it off and stamped the tree-line over the top so that the trees appeared to be in the background.  I inked all of the card the picture was on with Tea Dye DI, leaving only the horses white.  I matted this card onto the gold mirri (which unfortunately looks black in the photo).  I used two further mats, inked with the colours already used, and used a cream card as the base.

Mum's birthday card

For Mum's birthday card this year I started with a decoupaged image and a greeting plaque from Papermania's Botanicals Collection to use on an 8x8in card, and went from there.

As the rose in the decoupage had a coral hint to some of the petals, I added a border to match around the base panel to frame it and around the edge of the different layers of the greeting panel.

I use the Tattered Lace embossing folder, Butterfly Garden, as the background and coloured it with Shaded Lilac Distress Ink, to tie in with the butterflies on the  greeting plaque.  I also used the Doily embossing folder from Tattered Lace, but cut around one of the two embossed areas and edged it with the coral pen used earlier.

I die-cut the Demure Butterfly, again by Tattered Lace, coloured it coral and added pearls along the body.  The roses are handmade from the Small and Medium Rose dies by Britannia, and coloured to match the three main colours used.  

Blue Chrysanthemum

Another pretty, but simple, 5x5in card.

I started out with nothing but white card and paper.  I cut the mats using Tonic layering dies, the corner is the Tattered Lace Oriental Chrysanthemum and the greeting is from the All Occasion Sentiments, also by Tattered Lace.  I coloured the bottom mat, the chrysanthemum and the greeting with a single Spectrum Noir Pen (TB3) and put everything together.  I really like this monochromatic look, hope you do, too.

Lace Doily

Today's project is a 6x6in card.

I cut two square mats and a circle, with Tonic layering dies, and the Tattered Lace Doily Flourish.  The pink card was a piece of card left over from a previous project, but I coloured the mauve mat and the doily with Spectrum Noir pens. The flowers and leaves were cut from the Tattered Lace Mini Blooms, coloured with colours from the Spectrum Noir range to match the bottom mat, shaped and layered up.  The greeting was cut from the Tattered Lace All Occasion Sentiments, and again coloured to match.  The fronds were cut from the Britannia Fern Strip.  To finish, I added mini pearls to the centre of each flower.

New Venture

I spent yesterday morning setting up a new venture.  I have leased a shelf in a local shop, Wigglywoo's Craft Emporium, and am hoping to sell some of my crafty makes there.

Hope people will like what I make.

Study in blue and white

I wanted to make a very quick and simple card which looked lovely and would go in the post easily, so I came up with this.

All the dies I used are from Tattered Lace.  I cut the Bloomsbury die and the greeting, using the All Occasions Sentiments dies, from white Centura Pearl Card, and the flowers, Mini Blooms, from white irridescent paper, and coloured them all with a Spectrum Noir pen (TB3).  After shaping and layering up the flowers, I stuck everything onto the card.  I added pearls to the centre of all the flowers, including those on the central panel.

Pink with white daisies

Today's offering is a simple 5x5in card.

Using the Tonic layering dies, I cut a pink mat and attached it to a white 5xin card.  I cut The Tattered Lace Daisy Flourish, made an organza bow and adhered both to the card.  I put a single pink gem into the centre of the daisies and into each corner.  To finish, I added a greeting.

As I said, a simple, but effective, card.  Hope you agree.

Bold and Beautiful

If you've been following my blog you might recognize the design I've used for today's project.

This card was made in the same way as yesterday's, except that I've added an extra mat and used much bolder colours.  I just wanted to show that, even if you do make the same card again and again, the finished item can look completely different depending on the colour combinations that are used.  The Tattered Lace Florentine Large English Rose die was also used on a card that I posted 30 July.  

Florentine Rose

Today's project is a very simple A6 card, using a die-cut that I have utilised many times as it is absolutely beautiful.

I took a piece of dark green card, embossed it with the 'Lattice' embossing folder by Crafts Too and stuck it to the card base.  I cut the 'Florentine Large English Rose', by Tattered Lace, from pink pearlescent card and backed it with a burgandy paper.  The greeting, cut from the pink card, was cut from the Tattered Lace 'Sentiments' dies.

I hope you like the colour combination.

Otter

I just love the image on this project.  I decided that it was so good it didn't really need much to make a beautiful card.

The otter has been painted by Jayne Netley Mayhew and I printed it from one of the CD-Roms of her designs, which has been put together by Joanna Sheen.  

The image already had a frame around it, so all I did was use a large mat of charcoal grey and a small one of dark blue.  I used a small rectangle of the blue to add a peel-off greeting.

Dandelions

This card was once again cut using the Tonic layering dies and creating a frame from the same card.

I cut the Tattered Lace Florentine Edges set 1 and placed it behind the frame, cutting off the excess that hung over the sides.  I cut three of the Tattered Lace Dandelion die and eight if the "Dandelion Clock" pieces that comes with it.  I coloured the stems green and the rest pale pink.  I placed the three dandelions across the card, slightly under the edge die, and glued some mini pearls into the centre of each one.  I put two of the "clock" pieces into each corner and added a pearl.  I finished off by adding a pink bow, which I made on my new toy, the fabulous Bow Maker.

Mauve and lemon lace

Today's card is a variation on the card I made last Friday.  It was made in exactly the same way, apart from the flowers.

The flowers were made from the Britannia Rose dies, small, medium and large.  I used two of the five petal die-cuts from each size.  I glued and pinched the end of each individual petal and built them up, offsetting each layer.  The final step was adding pearls to the centre of each flower.

Birds in a frame

Last month I went to the Great British Craft Festival, which was great.  Hunkydory gave everyone a free gift, which was a kit called "Feathered Friends", and a beautiful kit it was too.  I've taken one of the sheets of card from the kit and used it on a 6x6in MDF frame.

As the main feature, I used the picture of the birds from one corner and cut it down to fit into the central aperture.  From the opposite corner I cut an outer frame, cutting around the flourish so that it overlapped the centre.  I added some pink flowers to the flourish to echo the flowers in the picture, and added some Flower Soft to the middle of each one.  I added some diecut butterflies from the Cheery Lynn Mini Dimensional Butterflies, colouring some pink, to tie in with the flowers, and some brown and orange, to match the butterfly in the picture.

Hope you like it.

Summer Days

Today's offering is a simple, but pretty A6 card.

I coloured the edge of some paper and matted it onto the card base.  I embossed a piece of Centura Pearl card with a Crafts Too embossing folder called Summer Days, and layered it onto the card.  I cut three butterflies from dies by Cheery Lynn, Mini Dimensional Butterflies and Small Exotic Butterflies, coloured their matching angel wings and adhered them to the card.  I made some flowers from the Tattered Lace Mini Blooms dies and placed these, and some leaves, in the empty corners.  I finished by adding some pearls to the centre of the butterflies, some faux pearls, using Cosmic Shimmer glue, to the flowers and a peel-off greeting.

Pink and white

Today's project is 6x6in card which I cut myself using Tonic layering dies.  I then cut a frame from the same card to fit over the front of it.

I cut four corners from Centura Pearl, using the Molly Moo Cute Corner dies, placed these behind the frame and stuck it down.  I cut the Tattered Lace Antique Circles from Centura Pearl, only using one of the inner parts as a frame, and matted it onto circles cut from the pink card and the Centura Pearl.  I added a peel-off greeting and a small white flower and leaf from the Tattered Lace Mini Blooms. Hope you like it.

Bird Decoupage

Today's project is an A5 card.

I cut the Tattered Lace All Over Floral die from a pale green pearlescent paper and matted it onto a silver pearlescent card.  The bird decoupage is from the Papermania Botanicals Collection, and this is where I took the colours for the mats from.  When I make up decoupage I always give each layer a bit of shape, rather than leaving them flat, and use Pinflair glue gel to stick the layers together.  I personally think that, by adding shape to the layers, it gives a more realistic finish although, I'm sure, not everyone would agree.  It's all down to individual choice.  I sprayed the finished decoupage with Spray and Shine, from Crafter's Companion, to give it a glazed look.

I added small yellow gems to to the centre of the blossoms on the decoupage, and small clear gems to the centres of the roses on the All Over Floral diecut.  I finished the project by making roses from the Britannia Small Rose Die, colouring them with shades to match the central feature and adding them to the scallops down the sides of the card.

Lace and Roses

For today's card I folded a piece of A4 card and cut through both layers with a square Tonic layering die to use as the card base.  I took a second piece of the same card and cut a frame to overlay the front of the card base.

I cut two of the Tattered Lace Double Delights Adore and adhered them to the back of the frame, at the top and the bottom.  I cut off the excess that was overhanging the frame, and glued the frame to the card.  I cut a circle from the Tonic scalloped circle layering dies and coloured it with a peach Spectrum Noir Pen.  I cut a slightly smaller plain circle from the same card that I used as a card base.  I stuck the two together, added a greeting and placed it in the centre of the card.
I made six roses from the Britannia Small Rose dies and glued them along the join between the two Double Deligjts Adore.  I made two roses from the medium Britannia Rose dies and put them in two of the corners.  All of the roses were coloured with the same peach pen as the scalloped circle.

Golden Wedding

Today's offering is a joint effort between me and my mum.  We wanted a gate-fold effect, but a bit more decorative.  We started with a piece of card measuring 32x14.5cm, and scored it at 5, 10, 11, 21, 22 and 27cm.  The two end panels were cut with the Molly Moo Delicate Doily Edge and folded back.  The rest of the card was folded as a classic gate-fold, except that it had a 1cm gusset at each side as we wanted to add 3 dimensional flowers inside as well as out.

Once I had made all the roses, from the Britannia small and medium rose dies, and cut the leaves from the Britannia Rose Leaf die, Mum got to work on putting the card together.  She arranged some leaves and buds, in two shades of gold, on the front of the card and put some white decorated pearlized paper on the panels behind.  And then, when you open the card you see this!

Mum lined the inside with the same pearlized paper and arranged some leaves and roses onto it.  She added the greeting "On Your Anniversary", which was cut from the Tattered Lace All Occasion Sentiments, and coloured gold to match the roses.  We made a box for the card because of the depth, and gave it to my Aunt and Uncle for their Golden Wedding Anniversary.  A special card for special people for their special celebration.

Red and Gold Masu Box

I've made another Masu box.

This box was made from a beautiful red and gold oriental style, heavyweight paper (probably about 200gsm).  I found the instructions for this box at www.homemade-gifts-made-easy.com.  I found these instructions particularly good as they show you how to make the lid half the depth of the box.

Kingfisher

After yesterday's epic, I've opted to show a simple card today.  I think that the picture is beautiful and doesn't need much to showcase it.

I've chosen yet another image by Jayne Netley Mayhew, I just love her artwork, from a CD-Rom by Joanna Sheen.  I covered an A6 card with a blue paper, leaving a small white border around the edge and matted the kingfisher onto brown card.  I cut the greeting, using a Tattered Lace die, from the brown card and put it all together.

Pop-up box card

This was my first attempt at making a pop-up box card.

I saw these on TV where they were selling kits of die-cut boxes and flowers and I thought to myself "the box would be easy to construct and I make my own flowers, so....".  So I worked it out and made one.
I started with a sheet of card and scored it at 7, 14, 21 and 28cm. This left a tab at the end to glue the structure together.  I then scored across the tab and the next three panels at 10cm down.  I cut down the 10cm score line between each of the panels and the tab, folded the card at all the score lines and cut the top of the tab off, as you only need to glue the bottom.  Before construction, I embossed two A4 papers with two different X-Cut embossing folders.  From one paper I cut three panels of 10.5 x 6.5cm.  From the other I cut three panels of 9.5 x 6.5cm and one panel of 20.5 x 6.5cm.  I coloured all of these panels with Bundled Sage Distress Ink.  I laid the card down flat and glued the first three green panels to the bottom panels of the card.  I then folded the top panels down and stuck the next three green panels onto these.
The next stage was to construct the box.  I put wet glue, or you could use strong double-sided tape, onto the tab and stuck the box together so that the tab is on the inside.  I stuck the final green panel onto the inside back panel, thus covering the tab and giving a nicer finish.
The next step was decoration.  I used two borders that I cut from the Joy Crafts Butterfly Border die, coloured them with Shaded Lilac Distress Ink and put these around the base of the box.  The large butterfly is the Demure Butterfly from Tattered Lace, which I coloured to match the butterfly border around the base.  The other butterflies are the Cheery Lynn Small Exotic Butterflies with angel wings, which I coloured using Spectrum Noir alcohol pens.  I cut the Tattered Lace Mini Blooms and Beautiful Blooms several times, coloured them with Spectrum Noir pens to match with the other colours used, shaped them and layered them up to create dimension.  I finished off by adding pearls to the flowers which hadn't already got a centre.

Oops, have got to edit this as I missed a bit - as if it isn't long enough already.  When constructing the box I cut two additional pieces of card measuring 8x1.5cm, scored in from each end at 0.5cm and folded into a Z shape. I added a 6.5x1cm strip of the green embossed paper to each and glued these pieces horizontally into the box, lining the top each to the top of the box.  I cut three strips of 1cm card and coloured it green (you could also use acetate) and stuck one of the butterflies onto each.  These were then glued to the strips going across.

Blooming Roses

My favourite flowers are roses and so, when I found some dies for cutting rose petals and stamens, I was delighted.  Each die cuts four rose petals and two stamens with each pass through the machine.  As I use 160gsm paper I cut two sheets together of the three different sizes of rose and the leaves at the same time.
Today's card is one I made last year and the first one I made using the roses.  It was for my Mum's birthday and I certainly used a lot of them.

The dies used are the small and medium rose dies, the rose leaves and the medium lattice from Britannia.  The one with the greeting on is by Spellbinders. 

I started with two pieces of A5 card, cut the lattice into both ends of each and joined them together with an extra piece of card to form an easel card.  I made loads of roses and buds, and because I had cut them from white paper, I selected several of the paler colours from the Spectrum Noir pens.  I also coloured the leaves.  I laid out the leaves, roses and buds to form the initial C, coloured the square die to match some of the roses, added a greeting and put this into the empty space with more leaves and a rose.  I adhered three flowers and some leaves to the bottom card to form a ledge to rest the top card against to make the easel.

As I said earlier this card was for Mum's birthday last year and her birthday is nearly upon us again.  I've got absolutely no idea what to create for her this year. Whatever I do has got to be something pretty good as (1) I want it to be better than the card above and (2) Mum's a crafter too, so it's got to be pretty impressive.

Tiger, tiger burning bright

Today's project is a 5x5in card.

Once again I chose a picture by Jayne Netley Mayhew from a CD-Rom by Joanna Sheen.  The topper sheet had seven pictures of the same image in three different sizes, this being the largest.  The background paper came from the same CD-Rom, but was actually paired with one of the other tiger images.  However, I decided to mix and match.  I put a narrow black mat between the topper and the background to create a frame.  I also used a black mat to put the gold peel-off greeting on so that it didn't get lost on the background.

Butterflies and flowers

I made this project using an 8x8in card blank and two mats.  I used a punch to round all the corners.

I coloured the base mat with Shaded Lilac Distress Ink and, after embossing the top mat with a stencil from Clarity Stamps, I coloured it with Bundled Sage Distress Ink.  I cut four of the Tattered Lace Detailed Flourish and coloured them with DG3 from the Spectrum Noir Pens.  I cut the Tattered Lace Mini Blooms several times, coloured them with Spectrum Noirs and layered them up to create dimensional flowers.  I used the Cheery Lynn Small Exotic Butterflies set and coloured the 'Angel Wings' with the Shaded Lilac to match the base mat.  For those of you who don't know 'Angel Wings' are the solid bit behind the filigree wings.  I added two matted circles just off-centre and a sentiment that was cut from the Tattered Lace Elegant Alphabet dies.  These were coloured with shades already used.  To finish, I added small blobs of Cosmic Shimmer Pearl Glue to the centre of each flower.
Isn't it amazing what can be made from plain white card and paper, colouring mediums and a little bit of glue.

Decadence?

Decadence, as in self-indulgence and over-blown.  At least, that's the way I've interpreted it.  You may ask, what on earth is she on about?  Well the answer is simple, I've decided to enter today's project into the monthly challenge on the Tattered Lace website - the title of the challenge, Decadence.  You can find this at http://challenge.tatteredlace.co.uk

I used the large easel by Pinflair and covered the 'canvas' and the bottom support with a paper from the Papermania Wild Rose Capsule Collection.  I cut two sections from a contrasting paper from the same collection using a frame from the Tattered Lace Kensington die set.  I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment and then used Bundled Sage Distress Ink on the outer frame and on the edge of the inner frame.  I coloured the 'canvas' supports with Bundled Sage Distress Ink and stuck everything together.  The large flowers are from the Capsule Collection, layering two together, but all the roses are handmade.  These were cut from an iridescent shimmer paper using the small, medium and large Rose dies by Britannia.  The pink roses were coloured with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink.  The leaves were also cut using a Britannia die and coloured with Bundled Sage Distress Ink.  I made the pearl sprays too.

Pink and beige

This card was made from a My Craft Studio CD-Rom, unfortunately I can't remember which one.

I printed the topper and matching background paper.  I adhered these onto paper that was coloured to enhance the rose on the topper, otherwise the rose was lost amongst all the beige.  I used two  die-cuts from the Tattered Lace Florentine Flourishes and coloured these to match.  I added two pearls in the opposing corners.