Woven Celebrate

Last year one of my ladies very kindly lent me her Sue Wilson weaving dies. I promptly cut four panels and put them in my 'to do' drawer where they have languished for months.
Every time I looked in the drawer I could see these things staring at me so a couple of weeks ago I finally managed to cobble a card together.

I enjoyed the weaving bit but to be honest I wouldn't personally buy these dies as I wouldn't know how to make any different styles using them. To get the effect here you need both weaving dies and together they are over £30. For that amount of money I would rather have dies that can be used in a larger variety of ways.

Most of the other dies here (flowers, flower outlines, frame and leaves) are also Sue Wilson, just the sentiment die that is Sizzix.

Sea Happy Birthday

This was my April fool card, albeit a day early.

 I keep all the project samples for card club in clear plastic sleeves to try and avoid accidents and smudges, my mum spotted this project and said "Oh that's nice and simple I'll get that done quickly".

Bless her she had no idea, until I took the card from the sleeve, that it might be a little more than just simple stamping and a single die-cut...

You should have seen her face drop!

Actually it was still a very straight-forward card because I bought the fancy-fold inners from Create and Craft so it's just a case of measuring/ cutting/ sticking the coloured panels on.

The sentiment stamps are by Hobby Art, Happy Birthday die is by Tonic
Card is 8 x 8 inches.

The sea themed stamps were from this magazine. You get a set of stamps, two dies, an embossing folder, some absolutely gorgeous papers, sequins and the magazine itself. It's £10 and I got mine in Tesco (because if it's in the shopping trolley at the supermarket it doesn't count as stash spends right? it's "groceries")

Easel Card

Easel card made with an 8 x 8 inch scallop card blank.
Papers are Tilda, the flowers and insect are die-cuts from one of the Tilda paper pads.
Sentiment die is by Tonic, I've layered it and added Glossy Accents, chicken wire die is MFT.

Pringles Tube

I have the cleverest ladies at my card club.
The very talented Jan showed us how to recycle a boring old Pringles tube (other savoury snacks are available but these small tubes are only 3 for £1 at one of the pound-shop places)

I could never have figured this out by myself -   yes I could cover the base but I wouldn't have known how to make the lid.

I used Tilda papers and cheap flowers from The Range for this one.

Happy Birthday

Flower/ leaf dies are by SU
I can't remember who makes the sentiment dies ...

I've used a landscape card and cut the front right-edge off using the long leaf die
I've then cut a piece of green card with the same die and attached it to the back edge, lining up the cut leaves.

Just for You

It's my friend Steven's birthday today, his mum is a crafter so I know she will be examining his card.

I decided to only sprinkle embossing powder on part of the stamped sentiment to give a two-tone effect. The background has been created with Versamark ink and clear and gold powders. Stamps are all SU.

Thank You

8 x 8 gatefold card.
I've used Sizzix Sewing Room die and Lili of the Valley papers.

Only just visible on the cream card  -  I stamped lots of rows of HOTP stitch stamps and embossed in clear powder.  The sentiment has been die-cut four times and layered for dimension.

Mother's Day

Card I made for my mum. I've used SU sentiment stamp and free papers from Making Cards magazine. I've just added some stitching and also a little Glossy Accents, card is 8 x8 inches.

Just for You

How annoying is this?

For this card I played around with some SU stamps and decided to use some of their dictionary- style paper too.
Finished the card and only then noticed the wording printed on the paper "urinary tract infection".

Why on earth would you want that printed on your card/ layout?
I tried using a cocktail stick dragged in ink over the wording to hide it a little but it's still very noticeable.
Maybe I could give it as a get well soon card for someone having problems in that area?

Thinking About You

This started out as a birthday card, 8 x 8 inches, but it ended up "Thinking About You" instead.
I couldn't get a decent cut edge (think I'd done too many layers) and it started getting smaller and smaller...good job I'm not a hairdresser!

Papers are from Making Cards magazine and sentiment is a Waltzingmouse stamp.

Bag Box

I am fortunate to have some very talented ladies at my card making club. Now and again I beg ask them to teach a class for me so I can have a break from trying to think of projects.
So far we've had two 'new' teachers, the others seem quite reluctant for some reason but I won't give up!


This week it was Jackie's turn and she showed us how to make this bag-box.
We used large scallop dies to make the sides (Spellbinders in my case, some used Go-Kreate with a smaller scallop) and then made a box for the inside.

The box is a fairly decent size, I might use mine for Easter eggs, the scalloped circles are about 6 inches to give some idea.
We made flowers out of layers of tissue paper to decorate. Mine should actually have a sentiment tag on as well but I was too busy talking to get as far as that.

Bloom

Stamp and matching die are by Taylored Expressions
I've used silver Wink of Stella on the jug, stamped the image twice and adhered with foam pads for a decoupage effect.

Birthday

Please excuse the messy edges to my poppies - I was rushing to get the card finished as a project for card club and I'm not a patient fussy-cutter at the best of times.


Card is 8 x 8 inches. I've stamped 'En Francais' stamp by Stampin' Up! and added white embossing powder. Next I used two different shades of Colour Cloud blending inks and smoothed them over the stamped images.

Sentiment stamp is by Woodware and poppy stamp set is by Heartfelt Creations

All Glammed Up

I've used a mix of Heartfelt Creations products here (All Glammed Up shoe stamp and die, Botanical Wings die and Botanical Rose stamps)

I stamped and embossed the shoe on a piece of black A4 and then scored it just inside the left-hand edge, before folding the card over. I then placed the die slightly over the fold line, this cuts a shoe-shaped card blank.

It's quite small so not a lot of room to write much inside but it's cute for a little thank-you note or similar.
The flowers stamp and die are genius - you can do six flowers at once, so the actual card is very very quick to make.

Triple-tag Card

To make the tags I used a set of dies from Elizabeth Craft Designs, and then hinged them together at the back.
The finished card is just under 5" x 7"

The sentiment and quote stamps are by Lili of the Valley
All other stamps are by Woodware

Birthday

Paper and sentiment stamp are both by Lili of the Valley
Gold flower made using Tattered Florals die by Tim Holtz/ Sizzix
Small flowers are by Hobby House, I ^think^ the swirl die is Memory Box

Special

We started 2015 at the local hospital and unfortunately it's where I ended the year as well. I'd never been in an ambulance before but think we more than made up for it in the last twelve months (mum, dad, MIL, me - all ill over the year)

Here's hoping 2016 is a healthy and happy one. My first card of this year:

I like the sentiment of this stamp - Woodware - because it's not just something for birthdays. The only downside is that it is very long, just about 8 inches I think, and I can't find an acrylic block that fits it!

I used a newish, flat, Cuttlebug plate in lieu of a block.

The leaf stamps are also by Woodware, I've used Versamark and clear embossing powder.

To liven up the sentiment I drew rough dashes with a 2-way glue pen, waited for it to go tacky, and placed foil over the top. The foiling isn't perfect but with the stamp being a 'scribble' style anyway it doesn't matter.

I know there are foiling machines on the market now but they all seem to need a laser printer, think I'll stick to the glue pen!

Party Time

 Like a lot of people I've been suffering the last few weeks with a really heavy cold. I felt like death warmed up one particular week but perked up just enough to attend both of our craft club parties.

We'd already arranged our meal at the local golf club when Tesco kindly invited us to a festive lunch in their staff canteen (if you don't already know we use a community room in Tesco each week).
We were really excited about this lunch, not so much the food but the fact that we all wanted to see behind the scenes in Tesco!

It was really nice, we were seated together and the store management served us our food. Didn't cost us a penny (the community room hire each week is free as well), so a big thank you to Tesco :)

For our golf club lunch I'd already bought some favour bags and had great plans to decorate them for a little gift for my ladies.
Unfortunately due to feeling so ill I left it till the last minute and then had to just cobble them together...

I started embellishing the tags (Sue Wilson die) by using a chisel-tip glue pen to write names before adding embossing powder and heating.
Then I realised that the chisel-tip would be too large to use for some names so switched to a finer tip glue pen, hence half the names looking completely different.

The stitched holly die is by Poppy Stamps. In an ideal world I would have added some sort of accent to these but by this point I'd had enough.

Hope everyone had a healthy and happy Christmas and wishing you the same for 2016.