A couple of cards to share

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter Sunday and if you are blessed enough to have a day off today, are having a wonderful time today too. We had my mum over for a roast chicken dinner and it was fantastic. (Hope that doesn't sound too boastful!) My lovely hubby even prepped some of the veg which made things a bit less stressful for me - once I'd left the room that is! As you may know my husband is severely sight impaired - he's been blind in his left eye since birth and his right eye has very little sight as a result of scar tissue - and the stubborn so-and-so refused to use a veg peeler and insisted on using a small kitchen knife to peel the carrots and potatoes. My hands were itching to take the knife off him and do it myself not only because I was dreadfully worried he'd cut himself but because he was wasting so much of the veg that he had to peel an entire 2kg bag of potatoes just so we'd have enough for mash and roast potatoes (if I'd done it myself or if he'd used a peeler we could have used half the amount!) In the end I went into another room and wasted veg (and oddly squarish potatoes which were 'interesting') aside he did a good job and I was able to prep the cauliflower and get the chicken in the oven so it worked out okay.

Another thing I managed to do was make a very quick Easter card for my mum because Chris and I have been on a bit of a Game of Thrones bender the last few days and we've been watching series 6 together, two episodes at a time (*sobs* we've finished it now!) which really ate into my crafting time so I hadn't made any cards apart from the very first Easter Egg hunt card I shared a few posts ago. Although neither of us go to church anymore I wanted to make my mum a faith based card so came up with the following card.

I am a huge fan of eBay dies from China and this ornate cross was one of my earlier buys. It die cut through the gold mirror card perfectly even though I was using my Sizzix Sidekick which is past it's best and not designed for thin dies. I stuck it down on a piece of purple card and cut around it. I got an C6 sized piece of white card and ran it through my Big Shot machine in an embossing folder called Bubble Explosion from Crafter's Companion. I adhered the cross to the embossed card using plenty of tape runner (normally I'd use wet glue or red liner tape but I couldn't find any and I was in a hurry.) and stamped a Happy Easter sentiment from one of the stamps that came with Creative Stamping magazine during the past few months on a non-embossed area of the card. I then added this panel to a pre-scored card blank from Dovecraft.

The second card is my favourite. Men's cards are always a challenge for me so I'm very pleased with how this one turned out. The motorbike die for this card came from eBay (are you noticing a pattern) and embosses the card stock as well as cutting it out. I die cut it three times out of silver mirror card, metallic red card and black card. I kept the red die cut shape in one piece (though some inner parts did fall out and got lost) and added parts of the silver and black to the top of it as shown so that the wheels and the chrome areas were the right colour - it's probably not all that accurate as I'm not all that familiar with motorbike design but I thought it looked pretty cool. The crash helmet was diecut out of the same metallic red card as the motorbike and I used one of the dies from the Icons die set from Mr Mister collection from DoCrafts, the map paper also came from the same collection. The Route 66 sign was made using a die from the same collection but is actually a Best Dad shield die. I cut it out using the die out of black card and carefully removed the Best Dad words so only the thin black border remained. I traced around the die itself onto white card and carefully cut it out. I added the black border onto the white shield shape with glue and once it had dried added a thick line using a black marker across the top as shown and wrote out ROUTE and US. I coloured in two die cut sixes from my stash with the same pen and added them to the shield. I found a thin strip of Kraft card in my scraps and cut it to the right length to use as a pole for the sign. I made a double Z fold card using Kraft card (see my Easter Egg card post for details on how to make one or check YouTube for a tutorial) and decorated as shown. The stamped Happy Birthday was yet another eBay buy from China. I made the envelope using my WRMK envelope punch board and decorated it before sticking it together  using some stamps from my stash - the tire marks stamp is a roller stamp which doesn't have a brand and only cost 29p quite a few years ago, it's actually the first time I've used and I'm really glad I didn't purge it at some point as I really love the effect. Once it was decorated I stuck the sides etc with tape runner.

I hope you like my latest makes - I had a lot of fun making them and the motorbike card was very time consuming but worth the time, whereas the Easter card was a lot quicker but still quite a nice card. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places.

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx