A couple of birthday cards

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a brilliant week, it's been lovely here on the east coast - bright with a crispness to the air. I was supposed to do my spring cleaning two weeks ago but kind of lost heart in it when my mum-in-law wasn't able to come for Mother's Day and these bright days are making me wish I'd done a bit more than I ended up doing for just my mum visiting. (It's not that I don't make an effort for my mum's visits but she knows what a untidy moo I can be and she's seen me at my worst but I wanted to make a good impression on my in-laws!)

It was my mum-in-law's birthday last Sunday and it was my Gramps-in law's birthday Tuesday so I thought I'd share the cards I made for them.

The first card features the wonderful Verity Rose from Crafter's Companion. She was coloured in using Promarkers and Spectrum Noir Shimmer markers. I added details with a Sakura stardust pen on her hat and beads. The layering piece was die cut out using a Tonic Studio die and I ink blended over it using Salty Ocean and Tumbled Glass Distress Inks.

The second card was inspired by a card made by Christine Smith AKA CraFTiPoTeNTiAl  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl_yNA4vpuo - please click the link to see the original card that inspired mine. Like Christine I used the hobby themed stamps that came free with Creative stamping Magazine a couple of months ago. I stamped them onto 200 gsm card and coloured them in using Flexmarkers then I fussy cut them out which was rather challenging for the pinchers/pliers and the screwdriver because the thin parts curled up on themselves after I cut them. I die cut the pinboard frame out of white card using two stitched rectangle dies from eBay and I held them in place using some washi tape so the dies didn't shift as the card went though the machine. I also stamped out the tool box and coloured it in using the Flexmarkers and then stamped over it using the small wood grain stamp from the set and the Happy Birthday sentiment. Again it was fussy cut out and I used a scalpel to cut out the inner part of the shape so I could add some extra tools. These tools were cut out using a set of dies from the Sara's Collection of Just For Men dies. I cut a piece of adhesive backed cork to just slightly smaller than the frame and layered the two together as shown to form the pin board.I added the tools with tape runner to the board and added foam pads to the back of the tool box - the tools were stuck to these so that they peeped out from the tool box. I used papers from Papermania Mr Mister range and added them to a Dovecraft A6 card blank using a tape runner from Crafter's Companion. I added the board to the 'wall' of the shed and the tool box to the 'floor' using extra glue on the tools that covered the sticky foam pads.

I did make another card for my mum-in-law on my mum's behalf but forgot to take any photos of it so I can't share here. As always if you have any questions or comments about my latest cards then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

Petal Fold cards (Updated)

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a brilliant weekend, it's the first day of spring here in the UK so hopefully the weather will improve. It's Mothering Sunday next weekend and a couple of months ago I invited (in person) my mum and my mum and dad-in-law to Sunday lunch on Mother's Day. I wanted to make it a bit special by making proper invites and sending them in the post. Unfortunately my in-laws won't be coming now as they've agreed to have Millie at a sleepover the night before so my sister-in-law can go with her boyfriend to his parents 50th Wedding Anniversary and they'll be too tired to come to ours the next day. I'd already almost made the invites when we found out but luckily I'd not added the invite part at that point as I needed to find a suitable sentiment so I don't have to bin the second card. This is the card for my mum.

Here is the one I made for my mother-in-law but without the invited panel.

The cards are pretty similar, I just used different papers to decorate the petals and the inner part. To make this card you need to cut a piece of card to 8" square and score all four sides at 2". Cut off the outer squares so you are left with a + shape. To make the petals I went through my circle dies and found one that fitted nicely on the flaps and traced around it. I cut the shapes out so each flap became a semi circle. I used a slightly smaller circle die to cut out the panel pieces (2 of them) and then cut them in half and added them to the outside parts of the flaps with tape runner. I cut a piece of decorative card to just under 4" and added it to the inside of the card. The actual invite card was cut to 3.5" square and stamped with You're Invited (stamp from stash) and a small butterfly that's from a stamp set from Ebay. You fold the card the same way you would a cardboard box.

I've also made an acceptance card in the same style for my sister and her husband to be - they are getting married in May and the invite came on Friday.

This card was made the same way but with different papers etc and I made an envelope for it using my WRMK envelope punch board.

I hope you like my latest makes, as always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

Just a quick update - I got this in the post today, it's a card made by my craft crush (lol that's what my hubby says I have because I get really excited when I get a new video notification) Christine Smith AKA CRaFTi PoTeNTiAl on Youtube , you may recognise her name from various crafting magazines such as Creative Stamping magazine as she often has a feature using the free covermounts. Christine ran a giveaway for one of three thank you cards after reaching 1000 subscribers on YouTube and I was absolutely delighted to be one of the three. Because I responded first I was able to choose the card I wanted and I asked for the blue version. It is absolutely gorgeous in real life and sadly my camera has not done it justice as it's about a 1000% nicer in real life. Anyway enough gushing (now you know why Chris sings "It's just a little crush" every time I mention Christine lol) here's the lovely thank you card.

Rainbows, Glitter and Unicorns

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a brilliant week and that you haven't been effected by the bad weather. We've not had any snow yet but there are warnings posted on the sea front warning that flooding is expected and not to walk along the sea front until the weather improves. Hopefully this will stop people playing chicken with the high waves but probably not! We aren't in any danger of sea flooding as we live on the edge of town (and in a first floor flat too) but I'm praying that the flooding isn't as bad as expected.

I forgot to take any photos of the desk tidy I was planning on sharing with you but I have a rather cute card to share with you instead. I was blessed so much last year to win a couple of MFT stamp sets in a Facebook giveaway featuring unicorns (with optional wings) rainbows and a load of sentiments. A lot of the sentiments I probably won't use as they have the American spellings and I prefer to have sentiments spelt correctly (or rather using the English spellings) because I'm rather fond of the 'u's in favours, flavours and favourites (lol all my f words have been underlined in red!) Luckily the sentiment I chose for this card is spelt the same in either country.

I'd like to apologise for the quality of these photos, they don't seem to be as bright as normal (though at least they aren't blurry for a change lol) I didn't have long to take many photos because I needed to get it posted and with impeccable timing my camera had very little charge left and switched itself off just after I took the third photo - still at least you're not having to wade through lots of nearly identical photos ☺.

I've been buying a lot of cheap dies on Ebay that usually come from China - sometimes they take a couple of months to arrive and the packaging they come in are just flimsy cellophane bags but considering how cheap they are (and they cut very well, at least I've not had a bad one yet!) it's worth having to repackage them and wait a while for them to arrive. The stitched sun and rainbow as well as the cloud die came in a recent order, one that actually only took a couple of weeks to arrive and I've totally fallen in love with them. I've been admiring all the stitched dies that have been doing the rounds for the past year or so but apart from the odd one, I've not been able to add any to my stash because to be honest the named brands dies are really expensive and I've chosen to spend my limited funds on other items instead. I'm so happy that I can now use a variety of stitched dies on my projects and I'm particularly pleased with how this one turned out. I teamed the sun, rainbow and clouds with the MFT Birdy Brown Magical Unicorn stamp set and I think they go perfectly together especially as I coloured the unicorns' manes and tails in rainbow colours. I made the glitter background by adding strips of extra wide d/s tape onto a piece of card and after removing the backing paper, I sprinkled the sticky surface with fine glitter and rubbed it into the surface firmly with my finger - it's a rather messy technique but as long as you rub the glitter hard, it shouldn't shed afterwards. I die cut all elements out of plain white card and coloured in as needed. The rainbow die doesn't stay in one piece but that makes it easier to colour separately. The original panel of card was A6 and the sun hung over the corner which looked good but I was worried about it getting damaged on an A6 card blank, my first thought was to add a double wonky stitch line around the edges of a blue card piece to frame the panel but I didn't have a blue that went with the greenish blue glitter on the panel so I ended up folding an A4 sheet of card in two to make an A5 card blank then repeating the glitter background using more d/s tape (FYI - I bought the extra wide d/s tape after seeing Christine Smith AKA CRaFTi PoTeNTiAl using it on some of her YouTube videos, she uses Tonic Studios Nuvo extra fine glitter or micro beads but I just used what I had on hand) and glitter directly onto the front of the card blank. I then added the panel onto the glittered front using a strong wet glue and held it in place with an acrylic block while the glue dried. I stamped the unicorn, stars and sentiment inside and coloured using very basic colours of ProMarkers as I wanted to keep the colouring simple. I added a tiny clear jewel to the tip of the unicorn's horn using some matt adhesive so if it oozed out it couldn't be seen then added some clear Shimmer brush marker to the unicorns' manes and tails and the rainbow. I added gold Shimmer brush marker to the inside unicorn's hooves and silver metallic marker to the outside unicorn's horn, hooves and wing - I went over these parts with a layer of Glossy Accents. I added some clear and blue sequins as shown and adhered a tiny clear gem to the centre of each sequin using more of the matt adhesive.

I really love this card and I just hope the recipient likes it too! I might not do the glitter back ground much until I've had a chance to bulk buy some fine glitter because it did use rather a lot especially as I ended up doing two backgrounds in the end - it was worth all the mess though! I've made an envelope for it using some embossed card stock in red but unfortunately my camera died before I could take a photo.

Weather permitting, my lovely friend Jean and her son are coming to visit on Saturday and I'm going to have a good tidy up session tomorrow so it'll be a few days before I'll have another chance to make anything. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places. I love to read what people have to say and enjoy it when we get to exchange ideas. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx