Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a wonderful New Year and have lots of brilliant crafty plans for 2017. I can't believe how quickly this week has gone, it doesn't seem like 5 minutes ago I was waiting for Big Ben (on tv) to ring in the new year and now it's already my mum's birthday. I've still got a chesty cough and croaky voice so haven't ventured outdoors yet, but hope to get into town next week. My mum's coming up tomorrow for a Sunday lunch so I'll be giving her part of her birthday present then and the rest when an order arrives (Monday), I was expecting her to come today but after speaking to her this morning we decided an extra day of rest might do me some good (and I think she's worried she might catch it) so I didn't need to stay up half the night making her card. My crudy (craft/study space for any newbie readers) is in desperate need of a sorting out but it's been too cold to work in there recently (average temp hovers around 14.4C in the winter!) but it's warmed up the last day or so. The only problem is my crafty mojo becomes more and more sluggish the more cluttered my crudy gets and I end up spending most of my crafty time trying to find homes for my new stuff before I can make anything but I don't have the energy or inclination to have a proper cleaning session in my crudy between crafting times. This cold or whatever it is has really zapped my energy and I'm spending a lot of time just napping at the moment.
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| Inside the DL sized card |
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| Close up of the Dovecraft Diecut sentiment |
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| Close up of the Dovecraft Butterfly die cut from watercolour card |
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| Close up of top butterfly |
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| Close up of middle butterfly - the layers are reversed on this for a different effect |
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| Bottom Butterfly |
I've made a DL sized butterfly card for my mum using a two layer die from Ebay on the outside and a couple of Dovecraft dies that came free with this month's issue of Crafts Beautiful magazine. I sometimes find the free gifts with Crafts Beautiful to be a bit naff frankly but the for the last few months they've really improved on the quality. The Dovecraft butterfly and painted script with love die are particularly good quality though they shouldn't have cost as much as the magazine is claiming they are worth because this style of die is priced at around £2 each in the shops. They are exclusive to Craft Beautiful magazine though so you can't get them in the shops on their own at present. The backing paper behind the butterflies on the front panel came from a pack of 8" x 8" butterfly themed papers from Tonic Studio. I actually cut the butterflies part off the paper as it looked a bit odd with the 3D butterflies on top. I removed the corners of the paper using a Tonic Studio corner punch (it's a double punch and also does a ticket style corner), I've been very fortunate to be able to really build up my Tonic Studio supplies recently as Every Craft's A Pound has had dies, punches, paper packs and memory clay packs in for a few months now, they haven't had any of the Nuvo range in but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they'll have some in sometime this year. I layered this piece onto a mat of silver mirror card and added the panel onto a DL sized card base from which I also removed the corners using the same punch - I was very impressed that the punch with a bit of weight behind it actually went through both layers of the card as I used Sheena's Stamping card which is at least 300gsm. I added the butterflies to the front of the card as shown with double sided tape just on the centre part of the butterflies so the wings could be folded upwards. I added the die cut sentiment inside and another butterfly on the bottom right corner of the card. The butterflies were die cut out of silver mirror card and watercolour card that had been painted using Leonie Pujol shimmer brush markers in Frosty Christmas in an ombre effect. I added some blue bling to the bodies as shown. I've kept the front sentiment free because my mum loves butterflies and may choose to have this card on permanent display. If I think the recipient will do this then I tend to put any sentiments on the inside so the card is more generic.
I really enjoyed making this card, as usual it didn't end up the way I expected (I planned on making an A5 card to begin with) but I think it's very pretty and hopefully my mum will like it. I'm planning on making her a desk tidy today so hopefully I'll have a blog to share very soon with a how to make tutorial (might even have a photo tutorial but no promises!) as they are rather charming and make great gifts. I was supposed to make quite a few as Christmas presents but ran out of time - this year I really must start my Christmas crafting more in advance!
I hope you have enjoyed my latest make, I'm hoping to make a few changes to the blog including adding it to Bloglovin as it's an easier way to subscribe to my blog but I haven't had chance to do any research as of yet. In the meantime you can subscribe via email by filling in a brief form in the sidebar or if you are a member of Google + you should be able to follow me via that. A lot of my sidebar content has vanished (such as my photo etc from the Facebook button) which is one of the reasons I shall be making some changes to this blog in the next few months. One of my goals this year is to grow my audience so I'd really appreciate any comments or suggestions on how to do that in the usual places. Thank you for getting to the end of a rather long post and until next time - keep crafting!
Love and crafty hugs,
Sarah xxx
