1st Birthday Card Featuring Tiny Tatty Teddy

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook. I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend, I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that it's already July! I've just the one card to share with you today, a first birthday card for Taio who's celebrating his birthday on Tuesday. I decided to use one of the boy Tiny Tatty Teddy stamps combined with a bunting die by Dovecraft and a 1 today die by Sizzix. I also used one of the Birthday Sentimentals by Crafter's Companion. I decorated an envelope made with the WRMK Envelope Punch Board using the Child's Play stamp set by Clearly Besotted Stamps.

I'm still loving the split panel card design and I thought it worked very well with this image. I stamped it out onto super smooth card stock and coloured it in using ProMarkers, I fussy cut it out and added some CC Sparkle Pen in clear on Tatty's nose and patches. I added foam tape to the back and stuck it to a panel of silver glitter card. I mounted this onto a scrap of blue card stock. The card blank was made by cutting a sheet of A4 card stock at 10.5cm (sorry I'll be mixing my metric with imperial here!) and then scored it at 14cm. I lined the fold crease up to the 2 inch mark on my trimmer and cut off the short front panel (A4 is 29 and a bit cm which is hard to score exactly in half. By scoring at 14cm one side of this card blank was nearly 2cm longer than the other but as it's being cut off it doesn't matter). From this cut off piece I trimmed off a 2" section to form the bottom of the card front. I added blue pieces of card to the 2" panels as shown. I die cut the smallest size of bunting using the Dovecraft die out of some more silver glitter card and carefully glued the top edge of each triangle to a short length of baker's twine. I carefully lined the loose panel of card to the bottom edge of the card blank and held it in place with a paperclip. I added a strip of d/s tape to the top and bottom back side of the decorated panel and stuck it to the top and bottom panels of the card blank as shown. I then removed the paperclip as it was no longer required. I diecut the number 1 and the word today out of more silver glitter card and added it to the bottom panel using dots of wet glue - I'd like to point out that the t is crooked by the die design not by me mucking it up lol. I added tiny foam pads to the underside of the punting and added them to the top of the card. I stamped a sentiment on the left hand side of the card.

The envelope was made using my envelope punch board by WRMK and I decorated the front using a couple of stamps from the Child's Play set by Clearly Besotted Stamps and coloured them in using ProMarkers.

I hope you like my latest card, it's really shimmery so should appeal to a one year old (it appeals to me anyway lol) I'm expecting a delivery tomorrow from Every Craft's A Pound as they've had a load of Tonic Studio Punches available on their website, I've ordered 17 out of the 18 available (the one I didn't order was a holly punch and I have quite a few already) I've only got a couple of Tonic Studio punches in my stash because the craft shop in town and the one I used to go to sell mainly Woodware and Martha Stewart punches. I personally love the Woodware punches but wouldn't recommend the MS ones as I've broken a couple trying to punch through card - for the price of a MS punch you would expect it to be able to punch through more than paper but apparently not! I'm not really sure where exactly I'm going to store 17 border/strip punches as I imagine they'll be quite bulky but at a saving of £10.99 per punch (yes you read that right - I saved £10.99 per punch as they are only a pound each!!) I couldn't pass them up especially as I've wanted some border punches for a while (the ones I have are Martha Stewart!). If Create and Craft are to be believed the Tonic Studio punches are very powerful so hopefully they're not going to break if I punch the edge of my cards (and if they do I only paid a pound for them!)

I'm looking forward to sharing what I come up with once I've had a play with the punches. If you have any questions or comments please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs

Sarah xxx

Baby Boy Box Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend, a belated Happy 4th of July to anyone who celebrates it, my husband and I had an Independence Day meal even though obviously we don't celebrate that holiday in the UK, to be honest I just wanted to try some USA frozen meals from Iceland lol - we had chilli Philli Steak Bake, salad and soured cream with home grown chives mixed in. I'm not sure how authentic the meal was but we both loved the chilli Philli steak bake and we'll certainly be having the soured cream and chives again though I may add some sliced spring onions next time to give it a bit more kick.

 Now that the weather's cooled down a bit I've been able to craft a bit more and today we got a phone call letting us know that we have a new addition to our family - a baby boy, the first one born in our family for 41 years! (That's on my husband's side of the family, I have three nephews and a great nephew on my side.) As you can imagine we're all thrilled at the news (not because it's a boy - we love all babies.) To celebrate I've made a new baby card for the new parents.

Baby Boy Box Card

This card has been a real labour of love, I started it at 3pm and didn't finish until nearly 2am, I didn't work solidly though as I broke off to make tea, wash up afterwards and I watched two hours of tv (love Criminal Minds and Bones!) Three of the handmade toppers are layered or partially decoupaged so I had a lot of fussy cutting to do which is why it took me so long to make. Although the box card blank is relatively simple to make, decorating it can take a while depending on how many toppers you want to add. I used five different stamp sets to make the toppers; Clearly Besotted Stamps "Child's Play" and "Little Onsie", Hobbycraft "Stork" stamp, Me to You tiny tatty teddy Boy Clear Sentiments stamps and Papermania "Honey & Hugs" - Owl stamps (new arrival oval sentiment). I stamped most things using Memento Tuxedo Black ink but used Tim Holtz "Mermaid Lagoon" distress ink to stamp the base layer of the shield shaped sentiment and the yacht on the back onsie, "Scattered Straw" distress ink for the onsie star and "Stormy Sky" distress ink for the elephant. All elements apart from the three stars were then coloured in using Flexmarkers. The stars were made by punching three shapes out of scrap card using a star punch and  I gave them a base coat of yellow Sharpie pen then covered over that with Sakura Glaze pen in yellow. To finish them off I added a pale yellow self adhesive gem in the centre of each star once the glaze had dried. The baby bundle that the stork on the back panel carries was stamped twice so it could be decoupaged and the A,B,C bricks and shield were also layered. The panels of the card base were covered using K & Company Cuddly Chenille Blue Stripe Printed Flat Paper and Congratulations scrapbook paper from my stash, this paper doesn't have any information on it but I suspect it was from a DCWV paper stack from quire a few years ago. Here are some more photos.

Close up of the 'floating' toppers

Close up of decoupaged stork on back panel

Close up of the back layer of floating toppers

Close up of middle layer of floating toppers

Close up of front layer of floating toppers

New Arrival Box Card

I've thoroughly enjoyed making this card, yes it took hours but what better way is there to spend those hours than on a hobby I love? I think my friends and family will be getting sick of receiving pop up box cards before I tire of making them lol. Because I decorate each panel I can use card with a lower gsm than my usual card which is great as I accidentally bought some 200gsm card. These cards are a great way to use some of it up. I have at least two more designs in mind, a zoo themed one for Bethany (my niece) and a dolphin card for my sister-in-law Sue. I have a while yet before I need to start making these cards though.

My friend rang me today to check I was available on Friday for a visit so I'll be frantically cleaning the flat for the next few days (housework comes second usually to crafting lol) so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to craft. However as soon as I have some spare time I'll share a couple of other projects I've been working on recently. As always if you have any craft related questions or comments I'd love to hear from you so please leave them in the usual places. I hope you all have a good week and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx