2 more cards (seem to have found mojo)

For the card above, The brief was "Unicorns".

I used a digistamp and coloured it with the new Ltd Edition 2013 promarker spring / summer set.

Then I inked up a mask with Vintage Velvet distress following a technique by Ali Reeve.

The hexagon patchwork stamp set is from Dreamees 

The Kaiser flowers and the spellbinder foliage die set are available from CraftSite 

Sentiment topper is a "Washable" by Ali Reeve and available from Clevercut

This card is made from Kraft Card stock from Papermania

The stamp set from from Woodware

Coloured with both promarkers and water colour pencils

Last Minute Birthday card (my fault)

I was supposed to have made this last week but it didn't happen.

So I have done this card this morning for my clients son and will be posting it myself shortly.

the stamp is from papermania and inked with versafine sepia inkpad

The mask is from Touch of Mica and inked through with versafine sepia inkpad and then I used copper perfect pearls mica powder over the top.

Sentiment printed on cream hammered paper and I used an inkylicious ink duster over the top again with the versamark sepia inkpad

Kraft card stock used for topper and card base 

Last minute Valentines card request

Had an e-mail earlier today from a customer asking for a Valentine's day card for his wife.

I used the Lily stamp from the Papermania "Just for You" set

Coloured with promarkers & flexmarkers and highlighted with

clear star sakura gel pen

More commissioned cards

The recipe for this one takes ingredients from all over the place, so lets get started :

Scalloped edge card blank - Craft Uk Ltd

Peppermint Green card stock - Create & Craft own make linen card

X-Cut butterfly punch for the border

JoyCrafts Triple Butterfly Die

Main sentiment - washables by Ali Reeve / Clevercut

2 tickets taken from Polka Doodles Cherry Blossom Lane CD

"Good luck" sentiment made in My Craft Studio

X-cut scalloped circle dies used to create topper

Inverted corner punch from Craftsite 

These are a set of 12 Gift Cards for May, you can found out all about May & her quest here

They were created in Serif Craft Artist 2 software

Here's the ingredients for this card:

Card blank - Craft UK Ltd

Peppermint Card stock - Create & Craft Linen stock - own make

Sentiment by Matthew Arnold - printed onto plain white card stock

Spellbinder Oval Die used to create aperture

Leaf stamp used with Adirondack "lettuce" ink pad. Sorry, I don't know the manufacturer of the leaf stamp itself - it was in my basket

"Our thoughts..." stamp from Papermania

Spellbinders foliage set available from Craft Site  

Florish Die from Marianne Designs 

Flowers by Kaisercraft available from Craft Site 

So far today ........................

The above card is for a 20 yr old man so I am hoping it fits the bill. I went for the "grunge" look and was genuinely going for the messy inked edge look. Do you know, its harder to do something deliberately wrong that to just make a mistake. 

So the ingredients for this recipe are as follows:-

Digital Image - "young man typing" from Mo's digital designs, coloured with promarkers

Gridded floor mask from Ali Reeve

Washable sentiment from Ali Reeve

Burlap scrap rubber stamp from "Butterflies" set by Creative expressions

2 papers from (believe it or not) Papermania black & white capsule collection (they aren't all feminine designs, as I think I've proven)

To create the gridded floor effect, I used some "quick mirror" stuff - the type you are supposed to stick to your wall and have an instant safety mirror. I stuck in onto a piece of thin card-stock before running it through the Grand Caliber. As it was a bit shiny for the type of card I wanted, I used a piece of kitchen paper which was enough to take the edge off. 

The edges of the papers and the coloured image were inked over with memento ink pad as I don't have a black distress ink pad - yet.

This is a set of 12 digitally designed gift cards for a lady who raises money & awareness for a cancer charity. I used Serif Craft Artist Pro to design the four toppers and these will be the gift cards for 2012.

Thank you for stopping by my blog today and hope you like what you see

Male birthday card

The vast majority of this card is made from papermania chronology set

the topper is a stamp also from papermania - classic car set 

"Hugs & Kisses"

"Hugs & Kisses"

Here is a topper I have made that is not only a DT card for Emergency Crafters (link on the right hand side) but also is my entry for this month challenge over at 

Craftsite Card making Challenge 

I took an A5 piece of black cardstock and trimmed a few mm of 2 sides so I knew it would fit onto the A5 piece of gold cardstock.

I ran this through the Grand Caliber using the Divine Swirls embossing folder made by provocraft which is available from Craftsite I ran it through twice and as its not a repeating pattern I knew I would need to cover the join. I had intended to ink over the piece with Perfect Medium and emboss with gold embossing powder. However, when I poured the embossing powder over the piece, I wasn't happy with the result so dusted it all off and was pleasantly surprised with the effect left on the black card. I polished it with a piece of kitchen roll and it gave it a bit of a shine.

Using the Asian Spellbinders Die set, also available from Craftsite , I cut 2 of the borders and laid them side by side along the centre of the embossed card and trimmed the ends.

I then die cut the central topper and inked through the die again with Perfect Medium, removed the die carefully and using a Hero Arts sentiment stamp, stamped into the centre of the circle and embossed with gold embossing powder. 

I then cut 4 corners and also a plaque which I cut in half and placed behind the central topper. 

Hope you like it & thank you for looking at my blog x  

2 new cards

This card uses a stamp from Pink Gem designs and is coloured with Promarkers.

the "tickets" are from Polka Doodles Cherry Blossom Lane CD

The card stock is Create & Craft own make

Distress inks were used on the tickets

This digistamp is from Crafts and Me and coloured with promarkers with a bit of clear star pen from Sakura thrown in for good measure.

Couple of creations for today

First project today is a butterfly card. 

The stamps are from Creative Expressions "Natures Wonders" by Sam Poole

I used Brilliance Copper inkpad throughout to keep the monochromatic look.

The ribbon was white and I inked it over with the copper inkpad, dried it and stamped over it with black archival ink. The butterfly die is from Marianne and whilst in the die, I used an ink duster to add a touch of copper colour to them. To make the toppers pop a bit, I went around the torn edges with "spice" promarker.

This little fella has been made from the pocket from an old denim skirt that a client of mine was going to throw away and she asked if I could so anything with it.

The Hogwarts Rehoming Centre for Raggidy Owls already has a home lined up for this one so he'll be winging his way to his new home soon. 

1st birthday card for twin boys

I had been asked to make a card for a lady to send to her grandson who are 1 soon.

The digistamp is from Redonkulous designs

coloured with promarkers 

New home card

Sometimes, I like to think "outside" the box when it comes to creating a card.

So I am hoping the buyer likes what I have come up with for this

'New home' card.

2 commissioned birthday cards

This one is for ... well it says who it's for - a trucker who will be 50 soon.

Digi image is from Kenny K designs coloured with promarkers 

& highlighted with metallic markers & sakura clear star.

Die cut cogs from Papermania Chronology

This card is for a man to send to his niece.

Chronology card for a man's son

Have been asked by a gentleman to make a card for his son

I used the Chronology set from papermania throughout for this one along with

antique linen & brushed corduroy distress inks & ink dusters

My mums birthday card

Its my mums birthday on Tuesday 15th and here is the card I have made for her

Base card - Kanban Kandi Kore, gutted to give me the top section.

White card stock - Touch of Mica Butter fly mask, inked over with an ink duster using Victorian velvet distress ink

X-cut doily die

spellbinders oval die

spellbinders asian accent die cut in half & tapped behind the oval

Joycraft corner dies

marianne butterfly die

creative expressions sentiment stamp

Stitched business card holder

Who says that business card holders have to be dull & boring? 

Following Melanie's tutorial  I have made this for myself

This is the 2nd one I tried. The first one I followed the direction to the letter and I personally found it a bit tight for the business cards so when I did this one, I added  1/4" to the 4 1/2" side as stated in the original measurements. For me this works fine now. I was wondering if there is a slight difference in size between American cards and ours here in the UK. Who knows, all I know is, I got a better fit.

Also, the original uses a button and an elastic hair band. I don't have any hair bands so on this occasion, I have used ribbon. One side to create a loop, the other with the loose ends. It works for me. Next time, I might do something different.

Happy Crafting everyone and thank you for looking x 

"you're sew special"

"You're sew special" 

All papers and stamps are from the "Sew Pretty" collection featured as 

a free gift with current issue of "Cardmaking & Papercraft" Magazine

With the exception of the "blanket stitch" stamp which is from Steph Weightmans range

Cranberry adirondack inkpad & archival blank inkpad 

"chronology" birthday card

Here is a commissioned card that I was asked to make.

The papers are all from Papermania's chronology set

The stamped image is from Sam Poole's vintage transport set.

The "duties of a shop steward" part was taken from t;internet,

taken into Serif Craft Artist and placed on top of a embellishment that looked

like a page from an A4 notebook. It was printed out, the edges torn with a 

distress ruler and inked over. Then stamped over with a chronology set stamp.

Daughters birthday card

Commissioned card for a daughter.

Coloured with promarkers

Odd request for 2 cards from 1 dog to another

Had an email from a client earlier today asking if he could have 2 cards. Yes not a problem I said, send me the details and I'll get onto it. 

The email dutifully arrives and he wants two cards FROM his dog, Toby. 

One is to go to the dog of the humans that look after Toby from time to time and the other is to the humans that do my clients garden (that's confused you hasn't it lol) 

Anyway, the topper is from Cupcake Crafting Paws for Thought CD's as this is what Toby looks like in real life. I needed a bit of "poetic license" with regards the sentiment as the topper actually has daffodils (as you can see) so had to come up with something to make it "fit".

I took the topper into Serif Craft Artist 2 and added a Santa Claus hat which I then glittered with a Sakura Clear Star pen. The backing paper, ribbon & bow were also done is Craft Artist 2

Skully Santa Xmas card for @jax1369

Morning all and welcome to my blog. I am going to try and embellish my blog posts a bit more as I normally just give a brief description of each card where as when I browse other peoples blogs, I see that they put a lot more information on, so here goes and wish me luck :-) 

If any of you don't tweet or don't understand how friendships can be formed using just 140 characters, then you've not given it a fair chance and you've not met my wonderful Twitter Sister @jax1369. To say we have become firm, long term best mates via twitter is an understatement. We communicate via BlackBerry Messenger every day and now they have the new option of BlackBerry Chat via the service, we can actually speak to each other too - mostly by mistake as one of us has hit the button in error but that's by the by.

Jax has a love of all things Gothic; I've met her husband - he has too. NOOOO, I am not saying Mad Dog is    Gothic - he'd abuse me in an email if I did. I mention it as I needed an image suitable for them both so when I  saw this "Skully Santa" Digistamp which is available here   I knew it was the perfect design.

I opened up Docrafts Designer and used a backing paper from one of the Papermania Capsule Collection cds and used one of the overlays to give the paper an appearance of texture. I added the "Christmas Wishes" digistamp to the bottom of the sheet and printed it out onto a cream coloured linen paper.

I tore the edges of the paper to make it fit onto an 8 x 8 card. Using Tea Dye Distress ink, I edged the paper and bought the colour into the centre of the paper to give it the aged look. The used some "sepia" spritz spray very lightly to add another feature. 

The topper was printed onto Clarity Stamp Theuva card and coloured with promarkers and flexmarkers. Edges were torn after the colouring and again edged with Tea Dye Distress ink pad.

I went around the card blank with the same ink pad, then curled the corners of the backing paper before attaching to the card blank.

I cut the snowflake from a Spellbinders die set onto antique gold mirri card and then dabbed over it with Cranberry alcohol ink. I am pleased with the result as I didn't want a completely covered look.

All in all, I am really pleased with how this card fell together and it was a nice change from doing 'traditional Christmas' designs. Hope you like it too