For Mums 2

My Mum and Mum in Law have their birthdays one day apart, always around Mother's day. Since one lives in Cornwall and the other in Scotland it's OK to make them pretty much the same and having made one I decided I liked the look of it enough to do another. In fact, I have another two made up in two more colours.

The dies are from Spellbinders Lace Doily Motifs and Labels 22. The sentiment is from the Wishing on a Star CD by Katy Sue Designs.

For the bows, I coloured white seam binding to match. The background is stamped with Clarity Stamp Leafy Swirl. The blending is done using my trusty Inkylicious Duster Brushes.

Not having any baker's twine, I tried to make my own using a technique I found. The principal worked but the result was not brilliant as the only "string" I could find was very absorbent and the colour spread too much.
Make your own baker's twine.

For Mums

Just a couple of simple cards for Mother's Day. Same format but one modern and the other a little more traditional.

Grasses

OK, this is forgery at its worst! I want to get into stamping so I've out-and-out copied a design from Inkylicious. I used their Create-A-Collage Meadow stamp set and the idea from the Spring Awakening sample that was demoed on C&C. The white stems are clear embossed onto the white background then the other stems built up on top. I used the ink dusters to blend.
All was going very well until I turned the card over to put tape on the back and managed to pick up brown ink from my craft mat. Perhaps it looks like grass pollen in the air, if you don't look too closely? ;-)

Lemon Baby

So cute! A waterfall card where the elements were cut on my Ecraft using an SVG from SVGCuts.com. Not difficult, just takes some time to cut out and construct. The background panels were edged with a Martha Stewart punch.

Very Black

A card for someone who likes black!

I was trying a few new (to me) techniques here.

The three panels were created using a clear embossed letter-press technique with masks from That Special Touch.

I love this verse stamp from Inkylicious. I cut it with a Spellbinder die and used an Inkylicious ink duster to shade it. I struggle with the cut n' dry foam and really like these brushes for control. The butterfly tag was deep embossed with a stamp.

Like pulling teeth!

I use metal dies such as those from Spellbinders and Marianne Design quite a lot. Some of them drive me to distraction when trying to get the card out of the die and I often end up tearing the more intricate ones. I've tried various ideas submitted by other folk over the years and even some of my own such as spraying the die with silicone lubricant! Furniture polish was one of the best but here's something else I've come up with.

Years ago I bought some non-stick material for lining my baking tins. In fact it's pretty much the same stuff that's used now for the non-stick brown craft mats. Anyway, I had some odd scraps so I tried die-cutting with it and left it in the die. The next time I cut some card it almost jumped out of the die on its own! After putting it through a few times the liner was nicely set into the die and I find that even the subsequent embossing is fine. I use fairly lightweight card for die-cutting so not sure how well it would work with thicker card.
Having used up all my tin-lining scraps I wasn't about to cut up my non-stick craft mat, so I headed off to one of those famous Pound shops. They sell the non-stick sheets. They are much thinner and therefore perhaps even better for my purpose than my original thicker liner.

Here is a photo of my Heartfelt Creations lace die (made by Spellbinders) with the pound liner inside and a sample of what I've cut using this method.


I have to say, to cover myself, that it is NOT recommended by the die or die-cutting machine manufacturers and, like me, you would use it at your own risk.

Busy January

I've had to make quite a few birthday cards for this month.


Quite busy this one, experimenting with some new punches. An easel card primarily using Martha Stewart punch-around-the-page and then Spellbinder flowers.

A simple patchwork of paper squares.

This one is using Spellbinders after a sample done by Sue from PartiCraft. At 8 inches it's quite substantial but perhaps a bit over the top.

A very simple card using a Heartfelt Creations lace die threaded with ribbon. 

 

An embossed card background (not very clear in this photo), with a punched centre panel topped with fabric rose ribbon.

50 Golden Years

Here's a triple easel card I created last year for my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary along with a matching box. Took a while to work out the sizing to make the max use of A4 but not too complicated after that. The fancy border is a Martha Stewart punch, I cut the 50 on an Ecraft and also used Spellbinders after printing the photos onto card. The flowers were from Wild Orchid Crafts.