Purple Wedding Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook!  The best man from our wedding and Chris's best friend Les married his long term partner Jill yesterday (though as I write it's actually Monday the 21st not Sunday the 27th!) By the time you read this post the wedding will be over though the reception might be ongoing *winks*. Hopefully though I'll actually be tucked up in bed getting some sleep before facing travelling back to Bridlington from Leeds (Otley doesn't have a train station). Obviously as I've been super organised and have written this blog in advance and set a schedule for it to be posted, I've no idea how the wedding has actually gone but I'm sure it went well. Chris is the joint best man and I'm planning on helping him with his speech later this week but he's very nervous about making it bless him. I'll admit to be rather nervous myself, I'm not good at meeting new people and I've only met Les twice (at the wedding and he came to our flat for a few hours last year) and I've only met Jill once very briefly at our wedding five years ago. It'll be challenging being in a room full of strangers while Chris goes about his best man dues but I shall face my fears and enjoy myself. At the very least it's been the perfect excuse to make a wedding card (I don't go to many weddings) and I've treated myself to a couple of new wedding themed goodies to make it too - bonus!

I love this purple that's become very popular for weddings in the last few years and it's the perfect colour for a late autumn/early winter wedding. To be honest I wasn't sure if purple was the wedding theme colour as the invite had purple hearts and pink hearts on the front but I checked with Jill and it turned out to be mainly purple (which I'm glad about as there were a lot of shades of pink on the invite which may have been tricky to match). The purple card for the card blank and the diecut gazebo and sentiment piece are Centura Pearl cardstock from the darks collection. I love the rich colour and shimmery effect when you tilt it to the light. I also used some Centura Pearl white card with a hint of silver shimmer finish to it for the inlaid die cut pieces of the gazebo and the bride and groom die cut piece. The groom was also cut out using a scrap of black card and cut to the right shape for his suit, shoes and hair (the hair looks a bit strange though!) The stitched oval dies and the wedding dies are all new purchases from eBay and came from China. They are so cheap that it's jaw dropping, the wedding set was only £2.11 and the gazebo is 5" by 4"! I'm not sure how much  the nesting stitched ovals were but they were less than £2.50 and there are 5 sizes altogether. The other card came from a mixed pack of larger than A5 card from Tattered Lace. The bow was made with one of the thinner cards using a die that came free with a magazine sometime this year and I added some Papermania gem bling to highlight certain areas of the card because who doesn't like a bit of bling? I used a couple of Flexmarkers to colour the bride and groom. The sentiments are from a Crafter's Companion Sara's Signature Wedding Collection stamp set and the silver printed vellum came from a gold and silver mixed pack of vellum from the same collection. I think how this card was made is pretty self explanatory so I won't go into details apart from saying that the the Gazebo die was die cut twice once in purple and once in white. I added double sided tape to the main parts of the white outline and kept the purple version in the die so I could poke the negative pieces out individually to place in the relative space on the white version until all the spaces were filled. It's a lot easier to do it this way rather than just poking them all out at once and trying to guess what belongs where.

I'm really pleased with how this card turned out, it wasn't at all how I'd imagined when I was in the planning stage but I love the beautiful gazebo and how it looks cut out in Centura Pearl card. Fingers crossed the weather will have improved for the wedding as the venue is set in 45 acres (I think!) of beautiful woodlands and it would be a shame if the couple didn't manage to get some outdoor photos due to either the rain or boggy conditions. Although I won't be able to see much of the area it'll be quite pleasant to go back to Otley as I used to live quite close to it as a young child.

Hopefully I'll have a few more cards to share with you when I get back (may need a day or two to recover though!) so I hope you'll keep an eye out for a new blog post soon. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and I'll try to respond within a few days if required. I hope you all have a brilliant Sunday and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

A Peek a Boo Flip Card and a bit of a life update

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! Wow I can't believe its been more than two weeks since my last blog post, I'm really sorry I've not posted more regularly but as usual life has got in the way and although I have been crafting I haven't found the time to actually blog about it. I seem to be spending a lot of my time on the phone to Practical Publishing at the moment trying to get my subscriptions for craft magazines sorted out. Ever since they stopped publishing Simply Homemade magazine I've had problems with my subscriptions, it's a long complicated and probably boring story so I'm not going to get into it here but I'm in the process of setting up yet another direct debit for Papercraft Essentials magazine using a hard copy of the Direct Debit Mandate in the hope that it actually works seeing as though doing it via the subscription line (telephone) isn't working. It's a bit annoying because it means my quarterly subscription price is increasing but on the bright side I will be getting a new subbie gift. I'll be enclosing a strongly worded letter explaining that if I don't receive the magazine when it is due (they keep turning up late or not at all!) then I'll be forced to cancel all my subscriptions with them and as there are around 5 from that company, it's a significant amount of business they'll be losing. As much as I love my craft magazines, I can't cope with the stress of trying to actually get the copies I've paid for and it's detrimental to my mental well-being (I actually cried when I got off the phone on Friday because the customer care advisor was so unhelpful!) and I'd rather go without them then continue the way things have been for the past four months.

Other bits of news I'm STILL trying to get my entry in for the Papercraft Magazines Designer of The Year 2016, the deadline is 13th of December so I've only got a few weeks to get it made and sent off. Ironically the competition is run by Practical Publishing which may have something to do with my comp craft block - I think that I've got a subconscious mental block making me reluctant to actually make two cards and a project because I'm not happy with Practical Publishing and I'm 'punishing' them! Lol I could just be procrastinating as usual though. Things aren't helped by the fact that unlike previous years, you can't send a self addressed returns box to get you your items back so I'm not wanting to make something I really love and lavish my precious time and crafty resources on if it's just going to end up in the bin - it's not like they are being donated to charity either like the last competition (winners still haven't been announced!) because you have to put your details on the back of each item which makes it an even bigger waste. It's getting to the point when I'm wondering if I should even bother entering especially as I've so many other crafty projects needing my time (Christmas is a-coming!) How are your crafty Christmas plans going?

Anyway enough of my woes and life lets get onto the important things - crafting! I recently watched a Youtube tutorial by Meg Loven for a peek a boo flip card which I really wanted to make. I didn't have a 2" punch only a 1 1/2" punch so mine's not quite the same as Meg's but I really love how it turned out. Here is a link to Meg's tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V54wCQtZsY4  - there is no point me re-doing the work that Meg has done so concisely on her video so I'll just share the supplies I used after the photos of the card.

 
The papers were from a DoCrafts Birthday party A4 Paper collection and the star and pink 'twirls' are stamps taken from a Sara Signature stamp set, the Happy Birthday banner is a Die-mond stamp and die set again from Crafter's Companion and the Happy Birthday that's revealed when the card is opened also came from the first stamp set but was masked off as it's actually sandwiched between a cake and it's stand. I used Brilliance ink for the star and 'twirl' stamping and Memento Tuxedo black ink for everything else. The 3D balloons were die cut using a free die from a magazine. I left the inside lower right panel blank for my message.

This card is for my lovely friend Jean who celebrates her birthday next weekend. I really hope she likes it. We are at a wedding next weekend so my mum is cat and flat sitting for us, it's also my sister-in-law's birthday so I need to make cards for both occasions, luckily I've been super organised this year and have had Sue's birthday present for a couple of months which I just need to wrap. I also want to give the flat a pre-maternal visit cleaning blitz. I readily admit that cleaning takes second place to crafting, reading, watching paint dry etc etc just because by its very nature it is tedious and never ending (especially with a blind husband who has enough sight to watch box sets (admittedly very close to the tv screen) but not enough to clean the toilet etc) and our flat is rarely "visitor ready"  but I have been trying a lot harder recently (since our boiler was inspected as a matter of fact) to keep on top of things and though it's kind of a waste of time straightening the lounge before I go to bed at the moment because it's a test series which starts at 4am (which is why I'm writing this at 2am - I need to wake Chris up at 4am so sleep is pointless for me until after that) and Chris never leaves the lounge the way he finds it, I do make sure the kitchen is decent before I sleep. Phew that was a long sentence and here was I promising not to bore you again with life stuff! I suppose my point is don't be surprised if this is the last blog post of November as I have a very busy week ahead and lots to prepare before December busyness starts in a week or two. I might just shock myself by being super organised and blogging in advance with a scheduled post going up next weekend featuring the wedding card but don't expect it as I'd hate to disappoint you *wink*.

Well this has been a very long post, well done if you've made it to the end. As always if you have any questions then please leave them in the usual places and don't forget to check out Meg Loven on Youtube. My next kinetic card challenge is to make a Twist and pop card (have a look on YT for an idea of what one is) I've been fascinated with this style of card for a few months but most tutorials are either confusing or in imperial measurements which need scorelines in 1/8" increments which is really hard to do on a Hougie Board because the inches side goes up in half inches and the metric side is in metric and they don't always line up perfectly. Still I enjoy a challenge especially ones I set myself. Hopefully I'll have a twist and pop card ready to share with you in a week or so and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

We will Rock You (a rocker card and a scarecrow card)

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and had a good weekend last week and are looking forward to this one. Sorry it's been a while since I added a post, it's been a busy week or so. I've got a couple of cards to share with you today which I made for my niece's 2nd birthday last week.

This was my first time making a rocker card from scratch and it took me nearly 5 hours in total because things kept going wrong. I don't own any large circle dies (biggest is about 4") so I had to draw around circular objects and cut them out. To be honest I do own  a Fiskars circles shape and cut but like a lot of craft items, it isn't designed for left handed people and the blade actually falls out of the housing as I try to cut around the circles - still the circle templates themselves come in useful for drawing round even if that's not their intended purpose. I really love the Tiny Tatty Teddy Girl Die that I bought from The Works about a month ago, the die set is £10 at The Works but they were having a 25% flash sale so I bagged myself a bargain. If you are in the UK and have a store near you then it's well worth signing up for their newsletter as they have money off codes regularly, if you spend over £20 you can get free delivery but they have a free click and collect option if you spend under that and don't want to pay £2.99 postage. The TTT girl bear die embosses as it die cuts so all the detail you can see on the bear comes from that and I went over it with a black glaze pen. I cut it out using a pale grey card and coloured it in using Flexmarkers. I added a die cut bow and highlighted the bear and bow with Dovecraft Glitter glue in either Rose, Topaz or Clear. I added some die cut balloons to some acetate and wrapped baker's twine around it before adding a mini tag to weigh them down. The acetate means the balloons float above the card (makes it difficult to find an envelope for it to go into though).

My second card featured a scarecrow with die cut clouds and a distressed ink background. The stamp set came from Buddly Crafts and I can't recall the brand but I think it may be Kars. The images in this set are very cute and I fussy cut around the scarecrow and hill scene and added it to a panel of distress inked card stock. If I'd used my brain then it would have been easier to stamp the scene first and cut it out and stamp the scarecrow separately instead of trying to fussy cut it all in one go. The clouds were made using a Sara's Signature die and I ran it through a paper crimper before rubbing over the clouds with a bit of distress ink left on the sponge applicator from colouring the sky.

I hope you like my latest creations, I've been taking part in a colouring challenge and I'll have more details on this in my next post. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx