Masculine Summer Card

Hello! Today I'd like to show you a card I made for my boyfriend, and as he gave me a pack of Tim Holtz Adage Tickets I decided I'd use two of them on the card!

Apologies for the terrible picture! My desk was a mess and I took this picture in a hurry.

The blue stripey Dovecraft paper and the sandy paper make me think of a sunny beach! I started by layering the sandy paper and the stripey paper, and then passing ribbon around the front of the card and glueing it beneath the green corrugated card. I stamped the tree and bird stamp (from this stamp set) onto white card stock and coloured it in with Promarkers. Then I inked around the image with Old Paper Distress Ink and stuck it onto the green card at an angle. I smudged the same ink onto the adage tickets, and then layered them with double sided sellotape, and finished the card by sticking down some vintage buttons! I'm entering this card into the following challenges:

Stamp Something - Summer fun
PaperPlay - In the garden
Divas By Design - Summer (second entry)
Polkadoodle - In an english country garden
Creative Inspirations - Summertime
Craft Your Days Away - Summer (second entry)
Come and Get It - Anything Goes

I hope you like this card, I really enjoyed making it!

Small Distressed Butterfly Card

Hello everyone! I've made a tiny (about 10cmx10cm) card with a vintage butterfly theme which I'd like to enter into the following challenges:

2 Sisters Challenge - Anything goes
Divas By Design Challenge - Summer theme
Crafty Cardmakers - Butterflies

OK so here's my tiny tiny card! (Which looks quite large in the picture!)

The backing paper is by K&Co (I love K&Co papers!), and after sticking this down I distressed the edges with Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink. I cut two elements from another paper in the same stack and distressed the edges with a pair of scissors. Then I crumpled them both and using Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink I inked the edges and over the creases. I layered them on the card and then realising I'd inked the butterfly a bit too heavily, I used blue and purple Promarkers to make the butterfly more noticeable! Then I used a gold wavy peel off and three gold peel off leaves to finish it off, and filled in the leaves with Black Diamond Stickles!

Now I'm off to make fairy cakes with my best friend! Have a nice day!

Fairy Doodles 'Just For You' Card

I haven't made anything for a while because my desk is really cluttered at the moment due to redecorating my bedroom and moving every piece of furniture around constantly! But I cleared everything off my desk today, blew the dust off my Distress Inks and made a card. I decided that I would enter it into a few challenges:

ABC Challenge - Y for Yesterday (I chose January 2011's challenge of M for Magical)
The Pink Elephant - Inspiration challenge (a picture of pink iced cupcakes in a blue case as inspiration)
Critter Challenge Blog - Happy b'day to me (I love the Fairydoodles stamp so I would love to receive this card!)
Craft Your Days Away - Summertime
and the challenges on both Bearly Mine and A Spoon Full of Sugar are to include a tag!

Phew that seems like a lot, I don't know how people enter their cards into 10 or more challenges! OK so here it is...

The card has lots of white because I wanted the card to be quite clean and the focus to be on the cute image! The stamp comes from the Buzzcrafts Fairy Doodle Stamps - Everyday 346 stamp set which is lovely, I really want to buy more of these stamps! I stamped the image on to white card stock, coloured it in with Promarkers and then cut the image out and distressed the edges with Tattered Rose Distress Ink. Then I cut a piece of 8x8 paper from a Papermania paperstack to be just larger than the cut out stamped image and distressed the edges with Broken China Distress Ink.

I used my Paula Pascual tag stamp set, stamping one of the tags on to white card stock (see Paula Pascual herself demonstrating how to use the tag stamps here). The stamps fit the EK Success large tag punch but I just cut around the edge, then hole punched the top and smudged Broken China Distress Ink over it. I stamped the sentiment onto glittery paper using a stamp from this set, then stuck it onto the tag using double sided sticky tape and snipped off the overlap. I found some pink sparkly ribbon and pulled that through the hole in the tag.

I stamped the butterflies using an element from another image in the Fairy Doodles set and coloured them in with Promarkers, then I layered the blue paper and the fairy image, and lastly glued the tag in the top right. I then used Icicle Stickles on the fairy wings to finish her off!

I hope you like this card, and my explanation wasn't too long and boring! Hopefully I'll be posting another card soon :)

Craft workshop

I held my first ever craft workshop today and it went really well! I was so pleased, everyone seemed to enjoy it and they want it to become a regular thing! I volunteered with a charity called Widows Care Worldwide which organises a day every two weeks in which people in the community meet, chat and play games. It was a really fun day and everyone made lovely cards to keep or to give to someone they care about. A 96 year old lady called Rose wrote hers out to her nan, which was really touching. Maybe next time I'll take photos of the cards which are made and post them here!

Cross stitch

So I haven't picked up anything to do with cross stitch since stitching Christmas cards last year, so I decided to start a new project which I had all the colours and fabric for! It is such a cute design which I started over the weekend, of two little mice and some beautiful blackberries which require Mill Hill seed beads to make them look really juicy! The chart is from Cross Stitcher magazine September 2008 (when I find the issue number I'll let you know!). This is what the finished design will look like.

These are the colours. They're such gorgeous colours!

And here is my feeble start! (sideways)

Fingers crossed I'll finish it in good time and it won't become one of those projects which I put aside and forget all about. But the mice are just so cute I don't think I could bring myself to put this to one side! I'll try to post regular updates :)

First ATC attempt!

I thought I'd share an ATC I made, because it's in a completely different style to the card I posted on Sunday. No Distress Inks, just bright zesty colours, Promarkers and a cute stamp set! ATCs are traditionally 2 and a half by 3 and a half inches, and ATC stands for Artist Trading Cards.

The little man and the sentiment are both from this stamp set. I love the oriental theme of the set! And the oriental garden scene is so fun to bring to life with Promarkers. For this ATC I stuck a border strip onto 2 and a half by 3 and a half inch white card stock. I stamped the man onto a different piece of white card stock and then coloured him with Promarkers. I cut around him and using double sided sellotape I glued him onto the ATC. I also glued a die cut heart onto the top so it just peeks over the edge. I used Dovecraft adhesive gemstones which can be found here, which I love because they come in strips of the same colour but you can cut them to use the gems individually. Here I used the green strip and in the space between the green gems I glued other gems. Finally I stamped the sentiment and used sticky foam squares to stick it so it overlapped the gemstones. I hope you like this ATC! They're really fun to make when you feel like crafting but you want to make something quick :)

First post ever!

I don't really know where to start! I won't bore you too much (whoever you are...) because I've made a thank you card which I'd love to share! Anyway, I'm a 20 year old girl called Rebecca who studies English Language and Literature at Birmingham University. I live in London with my family during the uni holidays, and I love making cards for my family, friends, and especially for my boyfriend (he's probably sick of all the cards I make for him!). I also enjoy cross stitching, but I don't cross stitch as much as I'd like to... maybe that can be a mid-year's resolution. Anyway, on to the first card of the first post of my blog!

This card is a Thank You card to my boyfriend which I made yesterday, because he buys me lots of lovely things and always surprises me! It is a C6 white card blank, which I stuck white spotted Dovecraft paper on to (which was a 12"x12" sheet), and used Walnut Stain Distress Ink on the edges using my blender tool which I think makes the paper look more grungey! I glued a dark blue embossed frame in the middle and using sticky foam squares I glued the chipboard sentiment in the middle of the frame to give the card more dimension. The chipboard was a brighter green so I used the Walnut Stain Distress Ink again on my blender tool and just smudged the ink on the surface to make it darker so it matches the paper better. Then finally I used small domes of Black Diamond Stickles on each corner of the frame to just finish the card off. And voila! It's a very simple card, but the colours make it quite masculine. The paper and the chipboard are also kind of circus themed!

Well I hope I didn't waffle on too much, and I hope you liked the card! Please leave me a comment if you have any suggestions :).