Double Z-Fold Mother's Day Cards

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and enjoying the first week of spring (at least here in the UK). The weather's been very mixed with bright sunny days and very rainy days too - typical British weather, no doubt it will be snowing by Easter lol. It's Mothering Sunday this weekend and I've invited my mum over for Sunday lunch - if all goes to plan I shall be making roast pork with stuffing, apple sauce (might even make it fresh *shock face*), mash potato, roast potatoes, carrots and cauliflower cheese. It's taken me a long time to realise that even though I don't particularly enjoy it, I'm actually a good cook and one of my latest dishes is cauliflower cheese - I've decided I'm going to try my hand at macaroni cheese next because strange as it might sound I've never had homemade before and if it's as tasty as cauliflower cheese then it's going to be pretty good (I think the secret is to add freshly ground nutmeg to the cheese sauce). Anyway enough of cooking, let's get on to something I do enjoy - crafting! In my last post, I shared the invite I made for my mum and this time I'd like to share the cards I've made for my mum and mum-in-law.

The cards are made from 300gsm smooth card stock, I buy it from Every Craft's A Pound when it's available and it's usually about £7.50 for 200 sheets which is really good value. They have 250gsm and 200gsm in for the same price but you get an additional 50 sheets per pack if my memory serves me correctly. I haven't bought any for a while because I've still got a pack of each  in my stash and I've also started to use Sheena's stamping card which is a lot more expensive but is thicker even though it's supposed to also be 300gsm which is the same as the super smooth. Plus you can't always get the particular card from ECAP unfortunately so I forget to look when I'm on the site. The card blanks are 5.5" square when folded and I decorated them with papers from the Kimono paper pack from Crafter's Companion. I love the gorgeous colours in this collection and the glitter highlights that are on many of the designs. I die cut a loopy circle using the free die set that came with last month's Diecutting Essentials magazine out of Centura pearl pale blue card from the pastels A4 card stack, it doesn't quite match but I didn't have any coloured card that did so thought this would do. I die cut the lacy circle using the second die in the set which also diecuts a small circle from the centre. I stamped the Happy Mother's Day greeting onto these circles and die cut a 'with love' sentiment which came free with a rose die set a few months ago - I'm afraid I can't remember which magazine it came free with. The butterfly was die cut using a nesting butterfly from a Sara Signature set that I got a few months ago, it's the smallest die in a set of three. I added black gems from my stash to form the body. I made the envelope using my WRMK envelope punch and stamped the large butterfly that came free with a magazine in the last couple of months, again I'm afraid I can't remember which magazine it was from - I do get rather a lot of magazines. I coloured them in using Flexmarkers and coated them with some clear Shimmer Marker before assembling the envelope.

I hope you like my latest makes and that you have a wonderful Mother's Day weekend. As always if you have any questions then please leave them in the usual places. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

Happy News

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and looking forward to the weekend. It's rather chilly here on the east coast but that just means it's perfect crafting weather. I don't actually have a card or project to share today, I'm still poorly so haven't been in my crudy much the past week. However, I do have some crafty news to share. The first thing I want to share is I've won a giveaway on Facebook! My prize of a paper crimper hasn't arrived yet but I'm really looking forward to having a play, as you probably know my husband is sight impaired so I try to add a lot of texture to the cards I make him so if he can't see the card (his sight isn't constant) then at least he's be able to feel the different layers and textures to it. This tool will be perfect for adding some texture in a different way so I'm thrilled to be one of the winners.

My second piece of news is even better! A few posts ago I hinted that I'd have some exciting news to share and now I can. I uploaded a Verity Rose Mother's Day card last month on the Crafter's Companion's Facebook page and the following day I got a private message from the Media Manager for Crafter's Companion who'd seen my card and wanted to feature it in the next issue of Crafter's Inspiration Magazine, she asked me to send a photo of the card via email to the magazine which I did. Unfortunately because I only have a Mini Kodak digital camera which only takes small file photos it wasn't suitable for publication (don't really understand the ins and outs of digital camera files - I've never had a problem uploading photos on my blog - apart from blurry images of course - or on Facebook) so I arranged for my mum to give me the card back so I could get my dad-in-law to scan it and email it to me. That didn't work though so my lovely sis-in-law Sue took a photo with her iPhone and emailed that to me. Luckily that was big enough and I've been waiting for the magazine to come out so I could order a copy. I managed to get it ordered on Wednesday and it came yesterday in the post. The card is in the letter page (they cobbled a letter together from my emails!) and it looks really good. Here's a couple of photos of it.

I really love the sweet comments Sara Davies wrote and I'm looking forward to receiving my £10 gift voucher. I've only got Cupcake to buy in the Verity Rose sets (there are some additional dies and a paper pad too) and as they are no longer available to buy as a collection, I might put this voucher towards it or there are some fantastic stamps and dies in the new Men's collection that I might get instead. I've had cards published in magazines before (I've even won a comp or two!) but this is the first time I've been approached via Facebook so I feel very honoured to have the card appear in such a brilliant magazine.

I hope you've enjoyed sharing my bits of good news, hopefully I'll have some cards to share soon, as I said at the beginning of the post I am still suffering from the bug/infection/dreaded lurgy I got nearly three weeks ago though thankfully I'm not as bad as I have been. I'm really lacking in energy and motivation as a result so it's a bit of a struggle to get my bum off the sofa and into the crudy but I will try to get some cards made over the weekend.  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