New Baby Boy Collage Card

Todays card is a CASE of a beautiful collage card I'd seen on Julie's Japes blog. I used Julie's card as the starting point for this weeks Try it Tuesday as it was a perfect inspiration point for my friends celebration card. I've seen so many of these square collage cards and wanted to have a go at one for a while. Last week one of my closest friends, Natalie, had her little boy Theo and I thought it was a perfect excuse to have a go (and his name would fit perfectly on this 14.8cm x 14.8cm square card).

The colour scheme is Very Vanilla, So Saffro, Pool Party and Crumb Came. The stamps I used are from Bundle of Love, Notable Alphabet and Aviary.

 

I loved creating all these mini squares to form the collage as a whole. Although it was a little challenging trying to line them all up (thank goodness for Anywhere Glue Sticks and their slight moveability when it comes to sticking things down).

A HUGE congratulations to Natalie and Ben on the arrival of Theo. I look forward to meeting him soon.

 

Please get in touch to find out more about Stampin' Up! and their products. Happy to help in any way I can. I have availability for party dates through May and June as well as a few spaces for my upcoming card and scrapbooking classes.

 

Happy Tuesday Craftiness

-X-



Weekend crafty makes

I thought I would share a little seasonal crafting with you today. Here is this weeks workshop project. I shared this with a lovely group of ladies I met this week. As it was a large meeting I simplified the project to allow me to teach it to a large number.

This is an Easter gift basket made from two tags cut with the Two Tags Biz die. I used So Saffron and Pretty in Pink matched with the Somebunny stamp set to finish the gift basket. And to finish the project completely I treated all my ladies to a little chocolate chick and egg treat.

And as I have been a bit craftily quiet this week I have two congratulatory cards to share today too. I have two friends locally who have recently celebrated the birth of grandchildren. So I made a card for each of them to celebrate their growing extended families.

The first card uses the Two By Two stamp coloured with watercolour pencils and blended with a blender pen and mounted on Pretty in Pink and embellished with basic pearls. The second card uses the lovely embossed vellum technique. I stamped the image from Bundle of Love with Stazon and then turned over and vellum and rubbed with my stylus (from the scoring board) over the areas of the image i wanted to turn white. I then mounted this on to Pretty In Pink card stock and mounted on to the main card base. The ribbon in both cards is the lovely Melon Mambo Striped Organdy ribbon from the Spring Summer catalogue.

Thanks for joining me today. Don't forget to take advantage of the last days of Sale-A-Bration. I will be placing an order on Friday so get your orders through to me before then to maximise your freebies ;0)

Happy weekend craftiness

-X-



A little bit of crafting

A while ago I posted about how Mum and I had spent a crafty day making up a batch of birth announcements/thank you cards for Summer's arrival. This was a few weeks before Summer was born and we made them so that all they needed was a photo to finish them off. Well last weekend I finally ordered some newborn photos of Summer to finish the cards ready to write and send out to all the generous and lovely people who have sent flowers, cards and gifts for my little Miss. More through luck than judgement I was able to order wallet sized prints (3" x 2") from Photobox and they fitted the So Saffron layer perfectly.

So the birth announcement was made with Whisper White, Rose Red and So Saffron cardstock and the Bundle of Love stampset. I used my blending pens to create the watercoloured effect with the bootees, rattle and rubber duck. I combined this with Stazon black ink to ensure the colours didn't run with the outline image. I embossed the cardblank with the Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder and stamped polka dots using Whisper White ink and the Dot Dot Dot background stamp onto the Rose Red layers. I finished with a strip of Blushing Bride Poly Stitched Ribbon and a tag punched with the Decorative Label Punch and stamped with the 'Bundle of Love' sentiment.

I dont think the photo quite does the card justice. I am a bit behind with the housework at the moment so couldn't find somewhere nice to stage this pic. I am so pleased with how they have turned out. I just need to find the time to sit down and actually write them all out (I managed to address all the envelopes in advance!)

And just to post a few updates on my beautiful Summer. Here are some further highlights from her first three weeks:

A picnic in the garden with her Aunties and Nana ;0)

Using her bouncy chair for the first time.

A fun family portrait. I suddenly realised I had no pictures of the three of us so asked Mum to snap a few of Sam, Summer and I last week.

It has been a super busy week with lots of visitors and I'm finally a bit more mobile so have been out walking with Summer. I spent ages going through all the photos from her first couple of weeks and loading them up to Photobox. I spent a small fortune ordering lots of prints for me and the family. I can feel a mammouth scrapbooking session coming on to catch up on everything......

Happy crafting all and a fabulous long Jubilee weekend too ;0)

-XXX-

Bundle of Love for my Secret Stork

 I'm not sure what happened with the colours in todays photos. This card is actually created using Pretty In Pink cardstock but in this photo it seems to have taken on an orange-y hue.

I am taking part in a Secret Stork with a Facebook group for ladies having babies in May. I wanted to create a baby themed card to go with my baby pressie. The lady I am sending to is expecting a girl and I have bought several pink items to go in the parcel. This card coordinates perfectly.

I created this card using the Bundle of Love stamp set paired with my various sized circle punches. I punched circles using Rose Red and Melon Manbo to make the most of Stampin' Up!'s coordinating pink shades. I coloured the details of the baby images with my Pretty in Pink Stampin' Write marker. I then used a paper ribbon from my stash (the Stampin' Up! crochet trim would work just as well) and embellished with the large size Basic Pearls.

This card looked like it was going to go very wrong as it was originally created as a 15cm x 15cm square card. I stamped the images across the whole card but it just didn't work properly. The layout was all wrong. So I cut the card in half and scored down the centre (creating a 7.5x15cm card instead).  I used the circle design for the front of the card and the pram and hearts are the reverse of the card. Dividing the card up like this worked so much better and I am much happier with the result.

Now all I have to do is pack up the parcel and pop the card in and its all set for posting.

Hope your Wednesday is going well. Hump day is nearly over ;0)

Happy Crafting ;0)

-X-

JYC Days 3, 4 and 5

Good morning JYC-ers and festive crafters.

Oh how I wish for a better camera or at least some basic knowledge on how to get the best out of the one we have already (although my partner and i have put a shared pressie of a new camera on the Christmas list this year. So hopefully we'll get a bargain in the sales after Christmas ;0) So once again, these are not the greatest pictures (largely due to being taken at 6am this morning before the sun had reared its head so I could edit, write and schedule this post before work!).

Here is a picture of my Stampin' Up! stall from this weekends craft fair (it features again on my JYC page but in a much smaller form). I was really pleased with the fair and how it went and my Snowman Soup and Reindeer Food went down a treat ;0) Thanks to Angie and Fiona for hosting the day and putting it all together. A hugely enjoyable festive afternoon (followed by a trip to the cinema to see Arthur Christmas!).

 Here is my JYC for Days 3 and 4:

Again I have used the reverse page of the pockets insert. I like this style as it has taken a lot of the 'worry' out of my creating. How can 4 rectangles of pretty paper ever look bad? And embellishing each page with an advent window makes it all the more Christmas-y.

 I am especially enjoying creating the central embellishment for each page. This one features Arthur in all his Christmas jumper glory ;0) 

 Here are my two advent windows. I am trying to keep a bit of consistency across the days by using a felt embellishment and matching papers to cover the outside of the windows.

 For my journalling for days 3 and 4 I decided not to tuck it away inside the pockets as with Days 1 and 2. As the Dec 3rd prompt was about Christmas cards I decided to make a duplicate card of one I created for my 'Due in May Facebook Group' Secret Santa. We were all tasked with finding some lovely little Mum to Be bits for our recipient. I had seen a card similar to this on the Convention inspiration boards and knew it would be a perfect Christmas card for another May Mum. So I set up making two, one for my SS and the other for my journal. I love using mixed stamp sets in unusual ways. I would never have thought to combine Polar Party with Bundle of Love. But the effect of doing so is lovely and Christmas-y ;0)

I created this with Real Red, Garden Green and Whisper White cardstock and matching Stampin' Write markers. For the icy ground I tore strips of Whisper White card and then finished with Tombow and Dazzlin Diamonds Glitter. The sentiment is stamped from Polar Party. 

And finally, as I am very conscious of my last years journal ending up too thick and straining at the rings holding it together, I decided to create a smaller Day 5 on the reverse of the Christmas card above. A simple page that speaks more about the journalling than the embellishments (and yet another example that one should not craft when exceptionally tired as you end up with a rather mish-mashy result!! Still in the spirit of keeping things simple, I wont be beating myself up over it. Today is a new day and a new page so I shall move on and create something different which may inspire me more).

So thank you for popping by for another installment of festive craftiness. I am loving looking at all your creations too and will hopefully pop by to leave comments later ;0)

-XXX-