Notecard

I have a card/notelet to show you today that is made with the Envelope Punch Board. The DSP is a pattern from Sweet Sorbet, one of the 'freebies' in the SAB promotion, and I used Pistachio Pudding for the base card with contrasting Crisp Cantaloupe punched with the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border Punch. The flowers are made with the Simply Pressed Clay and Blossom Mould coloured with a Crisp Cantaloupe marker with a few leaves from the Bird Builder Punch. The notecard is a piece of Whisper White stamped with the flower image and part of the sentiment from the Oh, Hello set and sponged around the edges with Crisp Cantaloupe.

Margaret x

More Poppies

Back again with the Pleasant Poppies background stamp, this time stamped onto a piece of the First Edition Specialty DSP. Firstly it was stamped with Staz-on and then coloured with a blender pen using Pumpkin Pie and Old Olive. The stamped DSP was matted onto Pumpkin Pie cardstock and fixed to a Neutrals Ivory card blank.
A strip of Pumpkin Pie was punched with the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border punch and this was placed across the card before adding a sentiment, punched with the Oval Punch and matted onto a Scallop Oval.
This was a fairly quick card to make and a good card to make if, like me, you find 'colouring-in' therapeutic :0)
Pop back tomorrow to see another quick and easy card which I made for my Mum to give to my nephew on his birthday.

Card Swap Group - Birthday card

It was Zoe's birthday last week so now I can safely show you the card I sent her. Zoe is a member of the card swap group, and also a SU demo, and her favorite colours are purples - hence the Elegant Eggplant! I used the Field Flowers stamp set (and whoops I got the bud the wrong way up!) along with a couple of sentiments and stamped in Elegant Eggplant, Wisteria Wonder and Old Olive. I cut a ribbon border from DSP with the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border Punch and added a butterfly punched with the Bitty Butterfly punch. The sentiment on the stem was punched with the Jewelry Tag punch and the other with the Oval punch matted onto a Wisteria Wonder Scallop Oval. I added a bit of diagonal scoring in the top right hand corner to add a bit of texture and finished the card off with a few Basic Pearls. Hope you had a great day Zoe!

Mixed Bunch Birthday

My apologies for being AWOL again! The saga still continues with Dad and, added to that, I've had a streaming cold for 10 days which doesn't seem to want to go - I think I must be looking after it too well :0) Hence not too much crafting getting done at the moment. However it is my sister's birthday today and this is a card I made for my Mum to give to her. I used a couple of the stamps from Mixed Bunch, which was available in the Summer Mini, along with the co-ordinating Blossom Punch both of which, I can tell you, will be making a reappearance in the brand new annual catalogue available from 1st October. I used one of the new In Colours, Summer Starfruit, which was stamped off to get some paler images. The sentiment is part of a stamp in the Happiest Birthday Wishes Hostess set, coloured with a marker and teamed with anotehr stamp from For my Family and punched with the Extra Large Oval Punch. A strip of cardstock punched with the Dotted Scallop Ribbon punch was added across the centre of the card, the central punched flower was added with dimensionals and Basic Pearls finished the card. I also added a bit of stamping to the envelope by using a post-it note as a mask.
Hope to be back soon, have a lovely weekend x

Treat Basket

This is a little gift basket I made as a peace offering for my 2-year old Grandaughter. Last night my Grandson (aged 4) wanted to come for a 'sleepover' (his word not mine!) with Granny and his sister wasn't very happy that she couldn't come as well. So I had this to give her when I went to pick him up, it goes without saying that she liked the contents (some sweets and grapes) better than the basket but she was swinging it round for a time before her Mummy took it off her and said it could go in her bedroom to keep her hair slides in.
These are the simplest baskets to make, a square of card which can be any measurement that is divisible by 3, score to make 9 equal squares, cut along the two score lines on two opposite sides, then draw up the two sides to meet in a point (glue together where the card touches). Hope that makes sense but honestly it is really easy. The flower on the front was made with the Blossom, 5-Petal Flower and Boho Blossoms punches and fixed in the centre with a Rhinestone Brad. The handle was made with the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border Punch again fixed with Rhinestone Brads. I added some loops of Pink Pirouette Taffeta Ribbon and a couple of butterflies cut from the Beautiful Wings Embosslits die.
* Update on the blog 'clear out' - there are now a lot of old posts which no longer have the photos but I need to set aside some time to delete them completely. Please bear with me - it's not a quick job!

Simply Stampin' Sketch

Oh dear, my posts this weekend are a bit like buses - nothing for ages then two come along at once! I have had a bit of extra crafting time this weekend due to the fact that I had to wait for someone to come and have a look at my conservatory roof which, in all this wind, has decided to come adrift. He has now been and inspected it and has to 'send the boys in' another day - just what I needed :0)
Anyway onto the cards which I made for the Simply Stampin' challenge. The first one is made with Perfect Plum as the card base with a strip of Elegant Eggplant, cut with the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border punch, placed across the card. The central panel is a Whisper White Top Note embossed with the Elegant Bouquet Embossing Folder, inked around the edge and glued in place onto the card base. I added two flowers to the top left corner made with the 5-Petal Flower punch and two smaller flowers in the bottom right corner punched with the Boho Blossoms punch. The sentiment is from the retired Create-a-Cupcake set.
The second card was a bit of an experiment and I'm not overly pleased with it (think the added circles were a step too far!) but thought I'd show you anyway. I made a base card with Naturals Ivory cardstock and layered on a piece of DSP from the First Edition Speciality pack which I had overstamped with images from French Foliage in Basic Black. The strip across the middle is the negative part of a piece of cardstock which had been cut with one of the Adorning Accents Edgelits dies, I used the negative part because I thought it looked more manly than the piece you are supposed to use! Three tags, stamped with Tiny Tags and cut with the Jewelry Tag punch, were added to the central strip and I think this is where I should have stopped. However, because the sketch required circles I stamped two of the French Foliage leaves and punched them out with a circle punch and overlapped these onto two slightly larger circles punched from Basic Black cardstock.

Appeal Update and Birthday card

Before I show you today's card I would like to give you an update on the appeal I made, on behalf of Jo Street, to raise money for the Candlelighter's. Sadly little Florence lost her battle with cancer just two days before the charity event where Jo was selling the donated cards but, on a brighter note, she raised £133 on the night and still has some cards left to sell. Well done Jo you did a brilliant job!

Now onto my card for today - another card for my nephew but this time from me!

This card was inspired by Vicky (her card is here) who, I have to say, is a constant inspiration to me - I really don't know where all her ideas come from. As you will see my card is very different but is based on Vicky's idea. I used the smaller of my two square punches to punch some images from a retired DSP pack and the larger one for Basic Black cardstock which I used to back the DSP. These were then layered onto Very Vanilla cardstock along with a sentiment banner which was decorated with a Vintage Brad. I made the A6 card base from a sheet of Basic Gray cardstock, cut along the longest side, so I could make a flap inside the card to hold some money. This was decorated with a strip of DSP and a strip of Basic Black punched with the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border Punch and a Very Vanilla insert cut with the Top Note Die. 

By the way the '4' is not significant - he's a grown up :0)

5 S's?

Wondering about the title of my post today? Well it's the Simply'Stampin Sketch challenge using Simply Soft! Go on humour me :0)

I used panels of DSP from Nursery Nest (one of the packs offered free with orders over £45 during April) and stamped the image from the Simply Soft Hostess set in Always Artichoke and then matted these onto slightly larger panels of Always Artichoke cardstock. These were then attached to a card blank and a border, punched with the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border punch, positioned across the panels. The sentiment was stamped onto Whsisper White and punched with the Word Window punch then matted onto a tag from the Lots of Tags dies with a piece of Baker's Twine threaded through the top.

Another very simple card - or it should have been if I'd had my brain in gear! I had three attempts at stamping one of the panels before I got it right as I got ink on the edge of the stamp - twice (you would think I would have learnt the first time wouldn't you?) and then cut the DSP wrong. Oh well I got there in the end and maybe now I should get on with the hundred and one jobs I need to do before going back to work on Monday. 

Have a great weekend and come back soon x

Easter Baskets

I am sneaking yet another post in today (5 posts in one weekend - now that's got to be a record!) and the reason for this is because I  popped over to the Friday Mashup challenge this afternoon and saw this

1. Make a project using the "colors Green & Yellow".
2. Or Make a "3-D project that's a Basket or a Treat Pouch".
3. Or "Mash it Up" and create a "Treat Basket/Pouch using the colors Green & Yellow". 

Now it just so happens that a couple of weeks ago I made these two Easter baskets that, quite by coincidence, fit the bill perfectly! 

Both are made with So Saffron cardstock and use flowers punched with an Itty Bitty Shapes punch, leaves from the Bird Builder punch and the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border punch either for or on the handle. The basket on the left is made with 4 Scallop Envelope die cuts and decorated on each side with an egg from Easter Blossoms, stamped in So Saffron and cut out. The one on the right is made with a Scallop Square, cut with the die, then scored and folded to make the basket (although it doesn't look like it in the photo, it is a lot smaller than the other one!) The sentiment is from Easter Blossoms and is punched with the Oval Punch and matted onto a Scallop Oval. 

All I had to do was to take some photos and, believe it or not, it had even got the green tissue paper in already!!

I have just seen the weather forecast and they say that this lovely warm, sunny weather is going to last until Thursday so, whatever you are doing, I hope you get the chance to enjoy it. Pop back tomorrow to see some more Easter cards which I have made for my grandchildren.

 

Everyday Enchantment

At the moment I am looking for 'quick'n'easy' cards - you know for that time when you need a card but you haven't got ages to think about it let alone make it as well. I also wanted to incorporate some of the new stamp sets and papers that I have (not all are new to the catalogues but new to me) and here is one that uses the Everyday Enchantment DSP - one of the choices in the SAB catalogue. I have used Calypso Coral which is a colourI haven't used before, a bit bright for my usual style of card but sometimes I need to be just that bit more adventurous and cater for other people's taste as well as my own, and besides that it co-ordinates perfectly with the DSP I chose! I have teamed it up with Crumb Cake as I thought it tied the two together really well. The Calypso Coral cardstock was embossed with the Vintage Wallpaper Embossing Folder and cut to size before layering onto a DL card blank and a piece of the DSP was butted up against this. I punched some Crumb Cake cardstock with the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border punch and I tied some Crumb Cake Taffeta ribbon around before placing down the join. The sentiment, from Create-a-Cupcake, was stamped in Calypso Coral onto a scrap of the DSP and punched with the Word Window punch and placed onto a Large Oval.

I will be back with some more quick cards, some of which have been inspired by Vicky aka Crafting Clare who is a constant source of inspiration to me and hundreds of others! I do try not to 'case' cards completely but use inspiring designs to change here & there and come up with my own version. So thank you Vicky, I spent a good few hours browsing your gorgeous creations the other night, which kept me happy while it was freezing cold and snowing like mad outside :0)