Wednesday, 27 October 2010

Back to oriental

I rescued the backing paper from a birthday present that DS had.  In fact, it was a gift bag and I fell in love with it and had a feeling that I could use it to make a card.
I needed to make a card for my cousin (we share a love of all things oriental) and decided to base my design around the “gift bag” backing paper.

I punched lots of little flowers in pink & purple.  I then folded them into quarters and glued them to the backing paper.  Using my small embossing tool, I opened the flowers to give it a 3D effect.  I them glued the backing paper to some matt gold paper to make the whole thing stand out.  As you can see, this was then mounted on a black, linen textured card blank.
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Tuesday, 26 October 2010

More dried flowers

Following on from my previous efforts with dried flowers, I decided to have another go.

This time I used a dried pansy.  The colours had remained quite strong after drying, so there was no need to recolour.  Working with the colours of the pansy, I chose a mauve card blank.

 

I carefully mounted the pansy on white card and then added a layer of acetate to protect the pansy.  I then mounted the whole lot onto gold card, finishing off with gold brads in the corners, to hold the acetate in place.

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Monday, 11 October 2010

Wedding present – with a difference

This weekend my cousin’s son got married.  We were invited to the celebrations but unfortunately we were unable to go.  We didn’t know what to get them so I decided to make a wedding present with a difference.
 

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Take salt & pepper mills, 6 tea towels, 4 napkin rings and a basket.

Make a bouquet, veil, collar, tie & jacket front and this is what you get.

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A bride & groom!!


Cover in cellophane, add some ribbon & hearts and it’s ready to go.

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Hope they had a wonderful day and fingers crossed that they liked their present.

Thursday, 7 October 2010

A get well card – a bit of tutorial

Well, for my second post of today (yes, I know my posts are like buses – you don’t see one for ages then two come along together!) I thought I would show you all how I make a card from start to finish, hence the title, a bit of a tutorial.

I needed to make a get well card for a friend of ours.  Not really knowing her likes/dislikes other than dancing, I decided to play safe and make an unusual card.

1.  My card blank – pearly white, 250 gsm
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2.  Using my standard template I printed my details on the back and the greeting on the front.
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3. Ready to be embossed with one of my favourite Cuttlebug folders – Stylized Flowers.
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4. Lining up the folder so it doesn’t emboss over the textDSC00525

and into the Big Shot it goes

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5. Now for the butterfly.

Using my butterfly die (from the Sizzix seasonal set – Butterfly #5) I cut 3 butterflies:  1 x pink; 1 x lilac and 1 x silver.DSC00530


6.  Using on the body from the silver shape, which I stuck to the pink “base” shape.
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7.  Taking the lilac shape, I cut the pieces that I wanted and stuck those to the pink shape.
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8.  I added two crystal gems and the butterfly is complete.
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I then glued the butterfly onto the embossed card.

9.  Done!!
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Now hopefully you have been able to follow my instructions.

Please remember © – use this “tutorial” for inspiration only.  Don’t copy – it’s lazy!

Blogger paul said...

love the way you have given the info on how you made / put card together. from my point on view it's helpful to see other technics

7 October 2010 18:19



Especially for Paul . . .

With reference to Paul’s comments about my cat card, here is a bit more information:

I traced around the Whiskas cat treat lid to get my shape, which I then cut out.
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I then cut strips of pink and cream paper which I stuck, alternating the colours, to my cat shape.  Once the shape was covered I embossed it using my Tiny Bubbles Cuttlebug folder.  I then stuck my covered & embossed shape onto some gold card and trimmed it to give a border.  The nose is a heart shaped gem, the whiskers are gold peel-offs and the ears are cut from pink pearly paper.  I drew the eyes and mouth by hand.


Hope this answers your question Paul.


Blogger paul said...

a crafty crafter ..lol what a brilliant idea using the whiskers lid honestly I really love the card thank you for letting me know how you put it together.

Saturday, 2 October 2010

The last of the September birthdays

 
The 30th is our friends birthday.  With all the celebrations in September it can be difficult to continue to come up with unusual cards.  This year I was lucky – I had been messing around with some flowers that I had dried and I decided to use these to make our friend’s card.

During the summer I had picked some hydrangea (hortensia) flowers and put them in my flower press.  When I finally remembered them they were certainly dried but also quite colourless.

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I trawled the web to see if it was possible to hand colour dried flowers and came across an article that gave instructions on how to colour dried flowers with pastels.  Well, after a bit of trial and error I was beginning to have a bit of success.
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I coloured some more, this time with blue pastels and used them to make this card.

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Our friend loved it, especially when I told her that the flowers were from my garden.