Shabby & Vintage?

If you have visited my blog recently you may have seen two cards which I entered for the House of Cards October Sketch Challenge (you can see the sketch below) - one being CAS and the other Classic & Elegant styles. Well this week the style is 'Shabby & Vintage' and I can honestly say I don't think I've ever made a card in this style (well not intentionally!!) Not to be beaten I had an idea in my head and set to - whether it can be described as shabby, vintage, a mixture of both or neither remains to be seen but at least I tried.
I started with a piece of Pink Pirouette DSP and sponged around the edges with Crumb Cake then added the 'crosses' with two strips of cardstock which had been cut with the Scallop Trim Border Punch, this was then matted onto a Crumb Cake card blank. The fancy circle in the centre is from the Perfect Pennants Bigz die with a circle of DSP, cut with a Circles Collection Framelit, matted onto it and stamped with the sentiment from Field Flowers.
For the larger flowers I took a piece of Pink Pirouette cardstock, distressed it with a bone folder and separated the two layers before cutting with the Floral Fusions Sizzlits die. These were sponged lightly with Crumb Cake before glueing the layers together and a Basic Pearl added to the centre. The leaves were cut from the Little Leaves Sizzlits die and the tiny flowers from one of the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch pack. The 'ribbon' loops are pieces of Crochet Trim coloured with Pink Pirouette ink. My apologies for the long explanation but there were a lot of different components to the card and this is one I definitely won't be adding to my 'Simples Sunday' collection :0)

This is the sketch!!

                             
              Margaret x

Another card for the 'thank you' orders but this time a 'for you'!! I cut a fancy circle from a design in the Holly Berry Speciality DSP with the Perfect Pennants die and glued it to a card blank. The leafy branch is Wild Wasabi cardstock cut with the Little Leaves die and the Very Vanilla flowers are punched with the flower punch in the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch Pack. I used some non-SU coloured pearls as I wanted to pick out the tiny yellow flowers on the DSP and the sentiment is stamped in Riding Hood Red and punched out using the Word Window punch.
A busy day again yesterday as, on top of all the usual stuff, we had a little get together for my grandaughter's birthday in the afternoon but we did get a day off from hospital visiting as my daughter went instead - hence I found a little bit of spare time last night to blog so scheduled this post for today. Are you confused - I am!!!

Birthday Rosette

This is the birthday card I have made for my gorgeous grandaughter who is 2 tomorrow. I think it may be a little old for her and, under normal circumstances I would have spent ages making a punch art Peppa Pig (or some such thing) but, as you probably know, time is not on my side at the moment so this is what I came up with in the time I had. I made the rosette with Pretty in Pink DSP from the Subtles Paper Stack and then stuck on a fancy circle cut from the Perfect Pennants die and topped with a Scallop Circle punch. The number 2 was from the Timeless Type Junior Alphabet die and the ribbon tails are Pretty in Pink satin ribbon. The picture on the right shows the card in it's decorated acetate box. I will try to be back again soon but this week is going to be rather hectic what with the decorator in, work as well as back and forth to the hospital!

Paper Medallions

Something a little different today. These are some medallions I made for my conservatory, using the new SU Score-Pal along with Crumb Cake and Chocolate Chip DSP from the Neutrals Paper Stack. The medallions are very easy to make, if a little time consuming, and if you would like to know how to make them there are lots of tutorials on YouTube. A word of advice though, don't attempt these if you don't own a Score-Pal or similar scoring board!!!

As my conservatory is all neutral colours I wanted to make the medallions to match so I stuck with the neutrals theme, both for the medallions and for the decoration. For the centres I used one of the decorative circles on the Perfect Pennants die with the DSP in the middle punched with a large circle punch. The letters are from the On Board Alphabet Soup pack (found on page 103 of the main catalogue),some coloured with a sponge dauber and Chocolate Chip and the others left plain. I finished decorating with a couple of butterflies on each medallion, cut with the Beautiful Wings Embosslits die and some Basic Pearls.

As you can see I have a metal wall art decoration fixed to the inside wall of my conservatory so I attached a magnet to the back of each medallion and this allowed me to position them wherever I wanted and, as well as that, it also means I can take them down when I want to!!

Gift Bag & card set

The gift bag and card I am showing you today is inspired by a present I have bought for a friend (hope she doesn't look at this before her birthday!) 

The material is coloured dragonflies, as shown on the left and, as I have a dragonfly stamp in the Nature's Nest set, I thought why not make a matching gift bag to pop my present in. I don't know about you but if anyone gives me something that is handcrafted I am always much more interested in the wrapping/box/container than I am the contents. With something handcrafted you always know that a lot of thought and effort has been put into the gift and it makes it so much more special.

Anyway enough waffle, have a look and see what you think.

The gift bag is made from the same tutorial that I used the other day for the flowery bag (scroll down for more info or see Sarah's turtorial here)

I used two sheets of Whisper White cardstock for the bag and some retired Melon Mambo ribbon (however this is now available in the Scallop Dots ribbon). I used the dragonfly stamp with Wisteria Wonder, Melon Mambo and Pumpkin Pie as these were the closest match to the fabric and the tiny flower, from the SAB set Fresh Vintage, was used just to fill in the gaps! I added a Melon Mambo gift tag from Cottage Garden.

I attached the handles differently this time by using Rhinestone Brads.

Now onto the card which, before you look, I will say I am not overly happy with - much too fussy for me, so may well be doing this again without the Melon Mambo fancy circle for the sentiment. I ummed and aarghed and decided to use it and after it was stuck I wished I hadn't!

I stamped a piece of Whisper White cardstock with the dragonfly and flower, using the same colours as before but this time stamped off to give a more subtle image. This was matted onto Wisteria Wonder cardstock and a piece of Melon Mambo ribbon was put around before layering onto a white card blank.

The sentiment, from the Hostess set Happiest Birthday Wishes was stamped in Wisteria Wonder and punched out with the Scallop Circle punch.

Then comes the bit I wish I'd left out - the sentiment was layered onto the Melon Mambo fancy circle, cut from the Perfect Pennants die and glued in place. I'm now convinced it would have looked SO much better without it!!!! Oh well you learn from your mistakes as they say - the number of mistakes I make I'm not so sure that's true :0)

Thanks for looking and for all the lovely comments - they really do mean a lot to me x
Whoops I pressed 'post' instead of 'save' so 2 posts today and probably none tomorrow!!

Christmas Hearts

 

Just been having another go at this week's Less is More challenge, One Layer-Heart(s), and yes I know I should be in bed but when I get crafting I seem to lose all track of time!! This was a bit of an experiment but I was quite pleased with how it turned out and I hope the ladies will forgive me for not having an awful lot of white space on this particular card, but when I tried it on a larger card it just didn't look right somehow.

I started by drawing a triangle in pencil and, using my stamp-a-ma-jig, I positioned the heart stamp from Tiny Tags and the star from the brand new Petite Pennants stamp set to form the Christmas tree shape. The tub was stamped with a pennant stamp (again from Petite Pennants) which had been masked with a post-it note so the point was cut off and the trunk drawn in with an Early Espresso marker. I chose the sentiment from Heard from the Heart because it fitted in with the heart theme.