Birthday card for my Husband

Yesterday was my husband's birthday and I made him quite a traditional looking card.

The birds were heat embossed using Elusive Images stamps and coloured with Distress Inks. I cut them out and mounted them on a plain matt on top of a patterned background. All the papers are from Anna Griffin. A simple 'Happy Birthday' greeting finished it off, husband likes the simpler style of card :-)

A close up of the embossed birds.

As a little extra something I also made him a grungeboard bookmark. Sized 6" by 2" you can get several of them from one piece of grungeboard, I think they make a nice small girft. I coloured this one with 'Bundled Sage' Distress ink, stamped a text/script image in 'Weathered Wood', then a Sanskrit  Proverb from Elusive Images in 'Broken China'. To finish I stamped a clock face from Crafty Individuals and a penny farthing bike from Tala Stamps, both in 'Peeled Paint'. 

 

Thank you for looking!

Sarah x

I have been crafting, honest!

Sorry I've been away so long, you know how it is, you have time to make things but no time to spend writing a blog and uploading photos. Well today I have been baking cupcakes for a small tea party I'm having for my friend's birthday tomorrow, so I have a spare half hour to upload my recent creations.

This is an invite I made for the aforementioned tea party. I haven't seen my friend for a while and I felt that we needed a girls only afternoon to catch up with each other, and a tea party seemed like a nice idea (I am obsessed with cake!).

The main image is from a stamp by Crafty Individuals which I stamped with Stayzon onto card that  I'd coloured with pearlised pink ink. The background is another Crafty Individuals stamp with a Tea Time theme: I stamped directly onto the cream base card with 'Antique Linen' Distress ink. It was finished off with two layers of ribbon, some gems and a cute flower shaped button.

For her birthday card I created another version of the 'Dream' card I made a few weeks ago. This time I made the background paper myself with two stamps from the same Creative Expressions 'Art Nouveau ladies' plate using Versamark ink and some Perfect Pearls in 'Interference Violet'. 

Another friend of mine looked at some photos of various craft projects I'd uploaded to my Facebook page and she asked me if I'd make her two cards the same as the 'Butterfly Blessings' card I'd made a while ago (see my slideshow folders to the right hand side of the page). I made one in exactly the same colours and this blue and green version too. I love these Elusive Images stamps so much, they always give such an artistic feel to anything you make with them. The background is stamped with Distress inks and the butterfly is coloured with pencils and a watercolour brush, with some Perfect Pearl accents.

Sarah xx

Green peacock birthday card and a touch of decoupage

Hello everyone, I hope you've all had a good weekend. It's a shame Sunday is almost over, back to work in the morning!

It's my Mother-In-Laws 65th birthday next week and of course I was commissioned to make her birthday card by my husband, he never has to bother choosing cards anymore now I make them all :-)  I know my Mother-In-Law is fonder of a more traditional style of card, and with this in mind I decided to make a decoupage from a Duflex kit of Art Nouveau images, all of which are from Alphonse Mucha paintings (he is my favourite artist, I adore his work). Here's the result:

I have to admit that it wasn't hard work to create, the images are all die cut, you just have to pop them out from the design sheet and trim them up a little to make them neater. They are a little fiddly though, some of the layers are really tiny. Here's an angled close up, so you can see the layers:

Also this weekend I decided to take part in two challenges. One was as part of the Graphicus Guild, with a very basic green theme and the other was at the Katzelkraft challenge blog 'Katzmania' following a design layout for a card. To make things easier I decided to roll both challenges into one card, using the Katzmania layout and the green Graphicus theme. Cheating? I'm not sure ;-) 

Here's the design template from Katzmania, I think I followed it closely enough:

The stamps are from Elusive Images, the peacock was cut out using my Cuttlebug. The feathered background was made by stamping Versamark ink on black card and then dusting Perfect Pearls over the top, it's quite pretty when it catches the light.

I'm going to use the card for a friends birthday later this month, I hope she likes green!

Sarah x

Elephant birthday card

It's been an interesting few days for me, craft wise, although I haven't actually made much I have been busy with other things crafty. 

Last week I decided to take the plunge with two things, firstly I joined the Graphicus Guild. Graphicus is the website owned by Glenda Waterworth, of Elusive Images rubber stamps fame, there she runs a 'guild' for people who love to stamp. It's a great value package of a binder with a monthly news letter (full of inspiration and product info) and when you subscribe you get the choice of an A4 stamp plate. I have several of the Elusive Images sets already, so this time I decided to pick the Paisley Elephant set:

I thought that it would be a good set to make some different cards for males, as I always seem to struggle with cards for the guys! With that thought in mind I made my brothers birthday card using this new set yesterday and here is the result:

The papers I used were Anna Griffin and the brad was a Papermania 'make your own brad'. The ink I used on the background was Oregano from Adirondack, I thought it gave a nice tone-on-tone effect with the green paper. The elephant was stamped on cream card with Timber brown Stayzon ink and coloured with watercolour pencils using a Koi water brush. I accented his saddle with some Perfect Pearls here and there. I finished it off with a gold embossed 'Happy Birthday' sentiment, I just love the style of that text!

The second thing I did last week was to join an online course, also run by Glenda Waterworth, at My Creative Classroom. She's running two courses there and the first one, which starts this month, is a basics of rubber stamping class. I thought I'd have a go as it's not very expensive and I am entirely self taught, so far, and I thought maybe there would be a few things I could pick up along the way. The second course starts in October and I'll be joining that too as it will be about more advanced techniques of stamping, which I know will prove useful to me :-)

Hopefully I'll post again tomorrow as I have my Mother-In-Law's birthday card to make this afternoon.

Sarah x