New Baby Card

This card is for my friend Carol, who has just given birth to her second Son, Dominic.  My February card class has been credited with his unexpected and swift arrival the following day at her home - or more specifically the discussion around not having a bag packed for the hospital already! Carol packed her bag the following morning and Dominic arrived safe and well that afternoon, just with a little less warning than expected!

So - I needed a really fast, cute new baby card!!!! This one was pretty super speedy - and now I have my very own vest template it'll be even faster when I need another one.

For this one I drew a baby vest on scrap paper - in fact I drew the left half and then put that onto a folded piece of card, which I then used as my template to make sure my vest was symmetrical. I used my paper piercing tool and used two brads from the subtles collection as buttons, before dimensionalling it up on a piece of Marina Mist cardstock and a Vanilla card base. I made sure 'hello baby' from the set teeny tiny sentiments was straight by using the stamp-a-ma-jig (affectionately named 'Bruce' by my class ladies) and I used black staz on ink.

I hope you like!

Leigh-Anne x

Lucky me!

How lucky am I? My fantastically romantic Husband snuck into my craft room while I was at work and made me this fabulous Birthday Voucher entitling the Bearer to Afternoon Tea at Fortnum and Mason! I'm thrilled by the afternoon tea but even more thrilled by the effort he put into making the voucher - Pool Party and Cherry Cobbler colour palette and look at all the daubing and the ribbon - he used a stamp I hadn't even got around to using yet! Impressed.com :)

Mothers Day Flowers

It's nearly time to show our Mummy's how much we love and appreciate them! Are you looking for a Mothers Day Card? Why not try this one.  You've got the card and flowers covered all in one.  This one was partly inspired by a card my Husband bought me for my Birthday - it's super simple and really fast.

The colour combination is Real Red, Crumb Cake, Coastal Cabana, as dictated by the beautiful Fresh Prints DSP stack in the spring/summer catalogue (Catalogue Order  number 132996, £6.25 for 48 sheets) with a little bit of Bermuda Bay to make it pop.  

The card is a 5 inch square base of Crumb Cake, and a 4.5 inch square topper of Real Red.  You could make your own envelope for this one using your Envelope Punch Board or your Simply Scored Board :)

This one is pretty much about using your Scissor Snips and hand crafting most of the shapes.  I hand cut the DSP leaving a nice pinch point to pop a piece of Silver Baker's Twine around (132976, £3.25 for 22.9m), and then stuck a small strip of Coastal Cabana behind it and again used my scissor snips to create a contour.  The leaves are hand snipped Crumb Cake scraps and the flowers are cut using the Itty Bitty punches and they have some Basic Pearl Jewels on them.

I used dimensionals for the bunch of flowers and then a combination of Tombo and dimensionals for the flowers.  Unusually I also dimensionalled up the Real Red Square - it's very 3D this card! Just beware if you're going to post it - cut down on the layers that are dimensionalled up to keep the postage down

Let me know what you think!

Leigh-Anne x

Stained Glass Delicate Doilies

What a fantastically sunny day to wake up to this morning! Perfect for showing you my stained glass delicate doilies card :)

This card is very simple, but quite time consuming.  It's essentially a colouring in task which is always very relaxing you just need some time to do it. It's also one of those projects that's perfect to carry around in your handbag for when you have a spare minute - once you've done the gold embossing all you need is a blender pen and a couple of colours so it's a great one to do on the move or in front of the TV.

I gold embossed delicate doilies onto velum, before gently colouring it in using blender pens.  I went for a pink and purple colour palette on this one - Rich Razzleberry, Strawberry Slush - and then Crushed Curry for a bit of contrast.

Once I'd got my velum window ready and waiting I used Whisper White cardstock to frame it.  I essentially did a regular size card (A5) and used my guillotine to cut 1.5cms in from the outside all the way around on the front of the card.  I then put my velum cardstock behind and adhered it using sticky strip before placing another piece of card over to make it lovely and neat! The covering piece of card is the same size as the card front and again I used the guillotine 1.5cms from the outside all the way around.  You could adhere this with Tombo but I decided to go with sticky strip all the way for this project - I didn't want any wet glue near my beautiful velum design!

The inside of the card - all neatened up!

I think I will probably write my message on the very back of this card so that it doesn't show through the stained glass effect......

I hope you enjoy! I think ill probably be making a few more of these with some other stamp sets :)

Leigh-Anne x

Garden Box Card

Gold embossing glows beautifully in warm light :)

Over the past couple of weeks or so it seems that EVERYBODY  is making this box! It's making it's way around the Inspirin' Inkees (Amanda Fowler's Team), and the Dazzling Dreamers (Liz Shannon's Team) teams.  This is a real 'WOW' card which goes from conveniently folding flat into a regular size envelope, to being an all singing all dancing box card and it's just incredibly versatile.  You can find a video with instructions on Very Victoria's Crafts on Youtube here and there are plenty of examples of other designs if you have a peruse online.

This is the watercolour paper and gold embossed butterfly in natural light

For a quick reference once you've looked at Victoria's video for the technique, the dimensions are A5 size cardstock, scored at 7.3cm along the short edge (i.e ~half way), and at 2,4,6 and 8 inches along the long side.  Don't forget to NOT fold down the back panel!

I based mine on a garden theme and guess what made another appearance...brushed gold cardstock and embossed gold powder, along with my favourite retired stamp set at the moment, elements of style.  I have used the very vintage wheel in crumb cake on the brushed gold cardstock to add a bit of texture.  The other card colour bases I used were pink pirhouette (also then with very vintage rolled onto it in blushing bride) and always artichoke for the leaves and grass - made out of little leaves sizzlits and a lot of snipping!

I gold embossed the apothecary art and the elements of style stamps onto watercolour paper, and I then watercoloured using blushing bride, strawberry slush, crisp canteloupe, pistachio pudding and always artichoke.

I've put it all together and added the finishing touches of Papillon Potpourri butterflies gold embossed onto velum, and coloured using blender pens and the same colour palette. I used a little flower wire for the larger butterfly to get is standing prouder.

I've left my greeting blank for now so that I can use it for a number of occasions......

I hope you like!x

Pretty Petals!

I came home from work the other day and my lovely husband had a surprise for me - he had found an old poetry book on our bookshelf full of pressed petals.  It's a lovely old book that I had picked up in a charity shop when I was in the throws of wedding planning two years ago - it didn't make it on to my wedding table plan - I used a more battered and stained book for that one (!)- but I did fill it with rose petals from our garden as a little experiment to see how they would come out.  I promptly (and helpfully) forgot anything about them.

Rediscovering them is a total treat - it worked brilliantly and I really wanted to get creative with them.  I had a little look online at pressed flowers/petal designs and couldn't find any inspiration - I didn't want to recreate a flower and that seems to be one of the only things I could find to do.  As you can see from my last card I'm loving the brushed gold card and the gold embossing powder at the mo so I wanted to use those again. The card base is brushed gold and them I layered up the petals using snail and tweezers onto a piece of scrap Very Vanilla measuring 5mm less than the card front in both directions. I used the browner petals at the edge first and then built in towards the middle with gradually more colourful flowers.  It needed glue dots for the final layer as snail would have ripped the petals.

It needed a little extra and I love the Papillon Potpourri butterflies.  I felt it needed to be translucent to compliment the flowers so I printed these on velum in embossed gold. I then used the blender pens with rose red and a little blushing bride/pink pirhouette to build up some colour before applying them with glue dots and here is the result.......voila! ;) I hope you like

I will definitely be pressing all my roses this year! :)

Clean vintage

It's a real shame that brushed gold card doesn't look as amazing in the pics as it does in person. It's a really subtle effect and if you haven't got any I highly recommend buying it! I embossed in gold onto velum and then coloured the flowers and leaves with blushing bride, a little strawberry slush, crisp canteloupe, pistachio pudding and always artichoke. I then backed it with very vanilla and put it on a background of brushed gold with the vintage wheel in crumb cake and a little gold ink with gorgeous grunge stamps.