Hello strangers.....

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all having a brilliant weekend and a good summer in general. I am very sorry not to have blogged for over a month, I haven't even got the excuse that I've had a lot on though it has been an eventful month, I've just not felt very crafty for a while and even forgo my own blog challenge *hangs head in shame*. Hopefully I'm back on form now and can share a few cards and projects with you. One of the biggest and best things that happened to me since my last blog post was the Baptism of my beautiful God-Daughter Selina Ariadne Flora and I'll be writing more about that event at a future date. I think it's only fair that I concentrate this blog post on the last challenge which was set almost a month ago. My lovely crafty friend Michele made a beautiful card from her scraps and (unlike me - more about it later) actually fulfilled both parts of the challenge and made a gorgeous double Z-fold card. Michele has sent lots of photos as requested so this blog post will be in two parts, the first part will be this one and features Michele's card and the second blog post will feature my cards and will be posted in 24 hours so you can fully appreciate Michele's card on this blog post.

Hasn't Michele done an amazing job? She's used some papers and toppers that came free from Making Cards magazine that she had left after making a Twist and Pop card (it's what inspired me to make my sunflower themed card a month ago).  I haven't been able to add all the photos she sent me as they've saved as PDF files instead of JPEGs and the server won't recognise them, I'm not tech savvy enough to do anything about it but I think the photos I have managed to add do the card justice. I adore the theme of the toppers and this would be a great card for a boy. I really love double Z fold cards because they fold up into a tiny space (depending on what size card you use) but have a lot of 'real estate' for toppers and sentiments. Michele has done a splendid job matching the papers to the toppers (something I struggle with if I'm honest) and even though she's used lots of different designs they look really good together and tie very nicely with the theme.

I hope you've enjoyed Michele's card, I will be back later with my challenge entry - I ended up making two cards in the end because I kind of forgot to make the card a 'fancy fold' and just concentrated on using my scraps lol. You'd think that as it was my idea to add the 'fancy fold' to the challenge that I'd actually remember to do it! *rolls eyes*.

Don't forget to come back later to see my creations and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx

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

A double Z fold Easter Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a brilliant weekend and managed to get lots of crafting done. Spring is most definitely in the air and I've been inspired by the bright sunshine and vibrant green colours to make an extra special Easter card for three of my nieces. I've actually made two of these cards and I will show you both cards as they are slightly different versions of the same design. Unfortunately I used some gorgeous coloured linen effect card to make my original card not realising that it would crack when I scored it and it's actually ripped at one of the folds so I've had to mend it using some tape which means it's not good enough to give away now.

There are lots of double z fold cards out there at the moment - Dawn's Stamping Thoughts on YouTube has an easy to follow tutorial and there are lots of other tutorials on YouTube - just put Double Z fold cards in the search box and you'll get loads of different videos to choose from. Most if not all Double Z fold cards are 4 1/4 " x 11" which I found a little small. The card folds down to 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" so I cut my card to 5 1/2" x 11" so it folds down to  5 1/2" x 5 1/2". I used the free fence die that came with issue 144 of Papercraft Essentials magazine and a couple of the stamps from the same issue. I also used a stitched border die from Ebay, a couple of cloud dies (one Ebay and one from Crafter's Companion) and three stitched oval dies also from Ebay.

The card base was made from Centura Pearl blue card from the Pastels collection, it has a very subtle sheen to it. The green parts were made using Dovecraft Premium card stock. I used one of the free stamps that came with this month's issue of Creative Stamping magazine to stamp a wood grain pattern onto the fence pieces after I die cut them out of brown card using the free fence die. I needed 7 die cuts to complete the fence on this card. The Easter eggs were die cut out of a DCWV 6" x 6" paperstack (it's actually card weight though) called The Birthday Wishes stack - you can't see on the photos but some of the papers have holographic film on them either completely (the green chevron pattern) or in spots. The other cards in the stack are made with a glossy finish. After die cutting the stitched hillside (because it's 11" long I needed to die cut the card twice taking care to line the die up with the previous cut) I stamped a load of mini Easter eggs using a tiny little stamp from the Springtime die and stamp set that came free with Papercraft Essentials magazine onto the green hill and front strip, a few of them are completely hidden by the fence but I think the girls will have fun having a Easter Egg Hunt on a card and there are 14 visible eggs to find (they're not all obvious though!) I used the Happy and Easter stamps from the same stamp set to stamp the greeting on the cloud. I made a matching envelope using my WRMK Envelope Punch Board and decorated the flap and front with the mini Easter Egg stamp.

here is where the card ripped

The second card is the original card but I used linen effect card stock instead of Centura Pearl blue card and Dovecraft Premium green card. Although the linen card from The Works is gorgeous, it's not suitable for scoring and folding because it cracked and totally split down one score line. I only used the two smallest oval dies for the Easter eggs on this card and used card covered with Dovecraft designer papers to make the eggs - they were actually scraps left over from the giraffe 1,2,3 card so it was quite a thrifty card to make.

I hope you like my latest makes, they were quite time consuming to make thanks to all the die cutting but the actual Z Fold card itself is very easy to make as it just involves a couple of cuts with a trimmer and some score lines - you could even just trim the card down to 11" (full width) score it then cut down to 5.5" so the double Z fold part is already scored as long as you are using cardstock that's either plain white or dual coloured as you would need to flip the scored part so the folds mirror each other and a pearlised card on one side would look odd with the plain side making up the second Z. Easter cards are not something I usually make mainly because rather like Christmas cards it's often cheaper just to buy them in bulk rather than hand crafting them but I had a lot of fun making these two. There is a variation on the double Z fold card which incorporates the box elements of a pop up box card and I'm considering making a couple of them for Mother's Day (less than two weeks away!)

As always if you have any comments or questions then please leave them in the usual places. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxxx