Tear Drop Flowers

The flowers on this card were inspired by Angie of Penny Flowers blog. She makes the most beautiful flowers and cards. I used her idea for making a flower out of a tear drop shaped punch. The fan is a stamped image - Creative Expressions Large Fan - which was stamped onto card, coloured, and then cut out and folded to add a little dimension.

Maybe I'll manage a fourth day of posting tomorrow? lol!

Pop-Up Flower Card

As promised, here is the afternoon's card. This is called a surprise pop-up card. The idea being that when you pull on the tab, you expect the inside to slide out, but instead the front of the card pops up, revealing the hidden message.

The leaves are two different sizes of birch leaf punch, and the flowers two different sizes of a six petal flower shape. The large ones have little sun shapes and pearls for the centres, and the smaller ones just have liquid pearls. The fern is from the Leone Em Maidenhair fern punch.

The green backing card is stamped with a flourish stamp and Versamark ink.

Here's a side view of the open card to show the way it pops up.

Lilac Blossom

I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted. I really don't know where the time has gone to. I do have quite a few cards to show you, and thought that I would kick off with this one, from the morning of my last class at my local craft shop.

I'm not sure how pleased the ladies were when I told them that they had about 160 of these tiny flowers to shape and stick on the card cones that we made! The punch used for both the leaves and flowers was the Leone Em Daphne and Lilac Combination. The flowers are punched from two slightly different shades of lilac paper, shaped and then the two shades randomly mixed when sticking the flowers to the card cones. The full instructions for making these flowers are in Leone Em's Floral Punch Craft V.



Hopefully the card that we did in the afternoon will be up tomorrow!

Framed Lace and Apricot Flowers

Thought I might go mad and post another card! This is one that I did a class for at my local craft shop last month. The lace panel is a Hero Arts stamp, Lace Frame, stamped in Versamark and embossed with white powder. The flowers are simply made using two layers of a five petaled flower shape, with a mini daisy centre. Each flower was glued onto a narrow card stalk, and then the stalks fixed together in groups of three before mounting onto the card. The leaves are also punched, and then mounted in threes to a stalk before fixing in place on the card. The vase is also a punch. The original shape wasn't quite wide enough, so I punched out a shape from card, then placed it onto a folded piece of scrap paper to use the contour to trace a wider shape. Cut out that shape and then unfolded and used as a template to draw around on the blue card for the vase. Then dry embossed with a folder before curving slightly and fixing over the bottom of the stems with silicone adhesive.

Make and Takes and Invitations

Well, this is a very belated posting, but I'm determined to catch up with things! We had a very enjoyable evening at our last stamper's ten meeting, thank you ladies! There were only five this time, as a few couldn't make it, but still pretty loud! I think the unveiling of the Mini may have had something to do with it . . .

I have had a couple of requests for pictures of the event - a little tricky, as the moment the camera comes out, people start hiding! Anyway, here is a group shot of everyone hard at work on their make and takes. I put some new light bulbs in, as the others were fine for dining, but not crafting, so we had much more light last night - but it still didn't improve the colour of the walls!


These are the two cards everyone is working on - both of them using new products from the Mini. Firstly the bird house uses the gorgeous new two step bird punch, and a design shamelessly cased from Monica - although I did change it a tiny bit, just to say I had put some effort in!

Second card is this one using the new Vintage Vogue set, in a Mellow Moss and Rose Red design - not pinched from someone else this time!

I have also finally updated the Challenge Showcase blog with the last couple of month's worth of lovely entries. My apologies to everyone for the huge delay on this - and thanks to Ruth for the nagging! You will see that the March section has already been started - but there is only one card so far, as that's all I've received to date!

There are many reasons why my blogging has been absent over the last few weeks, one of them being these:

100 of them! A simple gate fold design in ivory hammer finish card. The blue frame on the inside is Stampin' Up! Brocade Blue card, with a printed insert to match. The hearts and squares were dry embossed to the bride's design - I cut out multiple shapes in cardboard and stacked them together to create my own embossing die. Then stenciled the hearts in Brocade Blue ink. The centre heart on the outside of the invite has a clear Swarovski crystal on it. All tied closed with a Cornflower Blue satin ribbon. The 100th bow took a lot less time to tie than the first - I was just getting the hang of them! They seem to have gone down well with the recipients - so I'm pleased about that!

Off to catch up with some more tasks that I am behind on, and hopefully it won't be another six weeks before I'm back with another post. I do already have the cards to show you!

Chocolate Cake and Easter Eggs - and some Stamping.

It was our stamper's ten meeting last night and what a yummy treat we had! One of the members - Alex - brought a delicious, gooey chocolate cake that she had made especially for us! I'm sorry - I just have to show it to you!

So . . . now you've wiped the drool off your monitor, here are the cards we made:

This one uses the gorgeous Baroque Motifs set, along with Old Olive, Elegant Eggplant and Very Vanilla card. The flowers were stamped in Elegant Eggplant on a separate piece of card and cut out before gluing on top of the Old Olive stamped flourish. The flowers were also stamped in Old Olive ink on the Old Olive card strip. Finished off with a scalloped strip of Elegant Eggplant, same colour of ribbon and birthday greeting from Sincere Salutations.

This one is a complete case of a card by Helen, but it's such a lovely card I had to do it! So simple too. The stack of presents from the SAB Happy Moments set was stamped in Basic Grey ink and then watercoloured with the crayons and aqua painter in Night of Navy and Ruby Red on Confetti White card, which takes watercolouring very well. Then it was cut out and had some silver elastic cord added before being mounted on a piece of kraft with dimensionals. A little bit of white doodling around the edges with the white gel pen, before matting with more Confetti White, and then mounted on to a Night of Navy card base. The greeting was stamped in Night of Navy and then punched out with the Word Window punch, glued on to the card base, and finished off with a Night of Navy brad.

We also made one of these - a little gift pouch decorated as designed by Monica . Aren't they cute? We made the design on the left filled with the mini eggs. The one on the right is an exact case of the one done by Monica, and has a few crafting goodies in it. There's no gluing involved in making these pouches - just folding, and then the decorations stuck on. The paper on the left hand pouch is from the Tea Party designer paper set, and the one on the right from Tea and Crumpets.

Lots of my members are too far away to come to the meetings, so they receive the ingredients for the make and takes in with their orders - along with a challenge pack to enter into a prize draw for free goodies. Sorry - no chocolate cake in the orders though!

If you would like to join in the fun either in person or as a distance member, I have two places left in the group that has just started. Click here for more details, and use the contact me tab above to reserve yourself a spot.

Teddy with Flowers

Card/Paper: Lovely Lilac, So Saffron, Old Olive, Orchid Opulence, Whisper White, Creamy Caramel Textured, and Close to Cocoa Textured
Ink: Lovely Lilac, Close to Cocoa, black marker, white gel pen
Stamps: Inca Stamps Happy Birthday, Season of Joy flourish, Polka Dot background stamp
Other: So Saffron Grosgrain (retired)
Card Size: 15cm x 10.5cm (approx 4" x 6")

This teddy is from a digital class design (Bear for All Seasons) from Paper Punch Addiction. I had to adapt my teddy a bit as we don't have all the SU punches over here that they do in the US. So he's a little rounder than the original design - bit like me really! But he looks happy enough. He has quite a few extra little round pads floating around on the floor here - it was quicker to punch more than to search for the ones I kept dropping! Sponging the edges of those was pretty fiddly, but worth it in the end. Of course he has some flowers - I like to get flowers on a card whenever possible!

Red Hearts and Vanilla Lace

Card/Paper: Real Red, Very Vanilla, Groom Speciality Paper
Ink: Black Stazon
Stamps: Wonderful Words
Other: Real Red 5/8 Grosgrain Ribbon
Card Size: 15cm x 10.5cm (approx 4" x 6")

This is the second make and take from our stamper's ten meeting last night. I really like the Real Red and Very Vanilla together. The black Groom speciality paper is so thick, it's more like a lightweight card really - click to enlarge and see the lovely embossed pattern on it.

We used the Eyelet Border punch on the vanilla card, and the Heart to Heart punch on the black to punch out the hearts so that the red from a strip placed underneath shows through. Finished off with a quick stamped greeting and a wrapped bow.

Pastel Flowers

Card/Paper: Bashful Blue, Whisper White
Ink: Basic Gray, Pretty in Pink
Stamps: Happy Moments
Other: Bashful Blue Double Stitched Grosgrain Ribbon, Whisper White Taffeta Ribbon, Soft Subtles Watercolour Wonder Crayons
Card Size: 15cm x 10.5cm (approx 4" x 6")

This is one of the cards we made tonight at my stampers ten meeting. The flowers were stamped using Basic Gray ink, having first been stamped off once to soften the grey. Coloured in using the crayons and picking up the colour from the tips of the crayons using either a blender pen, or an aquabrush according to the preference of the member. On this card I have used an aquabrush. The colours are Pretty in Pink, Bashful Blue, Lavender Lace and Certainly Celery. The tags were made using both sizes of the Tag punches. All of the white card was sponged around the edges with Pretty in Pink ink and a sponge dauber. The white ribbon was threaded through holes punched in the tags, before wrapping onto the card on top of the blue ribbon. Then a short length of ribbon was tied in a knot and stuck on top of the tags using a glue dot. The tags were arranged before popping a foam dimensional behind each one to keep them in place.

We made another card which I'll put up tomorrow.

I am starting a new group in February, so if you would like to join in, click here for details.

Blue Flowers from Class

Another class at the Glitter Pot on Saturday - full, with lots of lovely ladies, and a gent in the afternoon. There was a fair contingent from the Imag-e-nation forum - better known as the 'rabble at the end'! Very enjoyable - thank you to everyone! This is the card we made in the morning. There were some mutterings along the lines of working them too hard, but in the end nearly everyone finished their card by lunch time! Hopefully they enjoyed it along the way.