Simple 60th for a man - using peeloffs!

What a rush, I realised my friend's husband's 60th was the next day and was under pressure to make a card from us in time to catch the post :( This is despite having a 'birthday book' of all the dates I need to make cards for - perhaps it would help if I checked it regularly!

I know that Ash likes all things to do with transport so I kept things very simple with a square white card, pearlised gold card and maroon Core'dinations card squares, topped off with white again. The car, clouds and lettering were all courtesy of gold peeloffs and then KanBan sparkly gems to brighten up the headlights and a few black ones to take away the bareness a bit. Then just a sprint to post it :))

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A card for Edward

Edward is a very special young man - and he adores his Westie, called Izzy. So, Izzy it had to be when I made his latest birthday card.

The decoupaged Westie image, doggie dish and ball were all from a decoupage sheet by Jolly Nation - of course the bowl didn't come with Izzy's name already on it....that would have been just tooooo much of a coincidence:)

The background (err, easel card again!) of grass and sky used card from my stash, the ribbon and button were also from my stash. The 'Happy, Happy Birthday' stamp is an Anita stamp. I got it ages ago from a rummage box in Hobbycraft - reduced. It has a little bit of rubber missing from one of the letters - probably why it was reduced - but it's a great stamp to use on lots of cards, especially for youngsters, and it's easy to fill in the missing bit with a teensy brush and some ink from the inkpad.

For Edward's name I stamped different coloured letters onto little squares of white card using a See-D's alphabet by Do Crafts - bought from Mad about Cards. These unmounted sets come in all shapes and sizes and cost about £1 a set. I just love Mad About Cards - they have ever-changing offers in their 'Pound Shop'....some bargains to be had here, and we all love a bargain!!! On hindsight perhaps I should have drawn a line joining the letters to make it look like bunting - but Edward was happy and that's good enough for me :)

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Same old, same old.........

This is a style I've used quite a bit, so apologies for putting these onto the blog but it does show how using different colours can totally change a card. Err, if you ignore poor quality of the first photo :(

The 80th birthday card was for one of my old school Matrons - from all of us in The Wilhelmshaven Association. Liselotte (or Lilo as she's fondly known) lives in Wilhelmshaven and does a lot of work for the Association. A little plug for the Association won't come amiss as we're always searching for ex-pupils. It was a British Forces boarding school in Germany and we have reunions, a website and regular newsletters - so if you know anyone who may have gone to Prince Rupert School in Wilhelmshaven, thousands of us did as there was a high turnover of pupils due to the nomadic life we led, please pass the message on! :) Link to our website is here


Back to the cards - Matron's was all sugar pink flowers and the 60th birthday card for Liz was in our old school colours of blue, white and silver (most of the teeny bouquets used flowers from Wild Orchid crafts). Liz is also one very special lady as she started the Association off in the first place - about 18 years ago now - and we all owe her a great deal. So many friendships have been rekindled thanks to Liz.

I hope you have happy memories of your schooldays :))

Di
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Birthday card for a friend with a sense of humour :)

Last weekend I had a great time with two dear friends from my days at boarding school. Living away from home you do forge friendships that survive - for more years than I'm gonna admit!

One of the 'girlies' is fond of cats and this is the card I made for her birthday last year. She was sporting the chain and charms, carefully detached from the card, dangling from her telephone this weekend!

I used a scalloped card with a Core'dinations background. The image is Penny Black coloured with Twinkling H2Os - the sentiment is also Penny Black. The card candy, flowers, brad and charms were all from my stash.

Thanks for calling by :)

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Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do!

These cards all started when I got the little corrugated flower pots - I think from Mad About Cards in their wonderful website bargains section...and there are loads in the packet! These will appear on some Christmas cards I think!

I used paper daisies from the wedding section in Hobbbycraft - I like the fact that they aren't 'perfect' - much more realistic. The backing papers are from a Daisy and Dandelion Picnic Patch A5 paper collection, matted onto Coredinations cardstock... as ever. After sticking it all together I just added some pearly yellowy bits of muted 'bling' to some of the printed background daisies to 'lift' them a bit.

The wavy sentiment 'Hope you have a perfect day' is from Elzybells. Their closing down sale is still on and I've bought quite a few of their unbacked rubber sentiments at about £1 each. Brilliant value and excellent quality. The sentiment was stamped using Brilliance 'Sunflower Yellow' then embossed. I did all the sentiments in one go before tackling the other areas of the cards BTW. It does save the heartache of spoiling a finished card if you don't get the stamping just right :)

Di
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Gorjuss 18th Birthday card

I made this at about 4am the other morning as a) I couldn't sleep and b) it was needed in a hurry for a friend's baby sister's 18th birthday.

I used a Gorjuss decoupage and, when assembled, layered it onto light brown background card (Core'dinations, again!). I cut this using a deckle blade in my Woodware trimmer. I love the trimmer and it's especially useful for scoring card using a different blade. The A5 deckle edged parchment effect card was a lucky find in my cardstock and the flowers and brads were from my stash as well - mostly Prima with some Papermania flowers mixed in.

The bow was tied with cream ribbon (it looks more cream in real life) edged with gold which came from Hobbycraft. I have quite a selection of ribbons in different colours and textures - it might be a throwback to when I went mad for pigtails and ribbons as a little girl I think :)

The lettering was done using gold peeloffs. For those rare creatures who still use peeloffs - one way to get the lettering absolutely straight and level is to use low tack sticky tape with a faint pencil line drawn just inside one edge. I find it easier to do this than to try to gently rub off pencil lines on the card itself. You can then mark the centre point for your lettering on the tape too. I find it easiest to write out the message on a spare slip of paper and then count the letters, find the middle and work outwards from there. Is this Granny sucking eggs stuff though?!

The insert was printed out, with a little Goruss image on the facing side opposite to the message - to tone with the front of the card of course - downloaded from the Internet. The edges of the insert were trimmed, again using the Woodware trimmer deckle blade.

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Baptism card for a little boy

Our neighbours have a lovely little boy, aged almost two. Sunday was his Baptism day and, as he's a toddler rather than a babe in arms, I didn't want to make too babyish a card. So I kept it very simple with pale blue DCWV paper - layered onto silver mirri card with a sort of watermark pattern on it. I then used peeloffs and some bling for the rest, with the cross embellishment on the front all toned in. The colours haven't come out at all well in this rather blurred photo of the card but I spotted it too late and couldn't really go and ask for it back to photograph again! The box was just tickled up with peeloffs again and tied with some ribbon from my stash (Hobbycraft). Sorry, I've tried all ways to post the photo of the box right way up but it insists on flipping itself sideways...even tried fooling it by rotatating it so it looked wrong in the first place to see if it would right itself.....no luck so I think it sussed what I was up too!!

On the subject of peeloffs, I've read a few 'sniffy' remarks on people's blogs lately about them. Many people are proclaiming they've ditched them and 'moved on'...presumably to 'better' things. I know there are so many ways of doing lettering and wording out there, a lot of which I do use - but peeloffs do have their place....and until someone comes up with silver or gold ink refills for my printer I shall continue to use them where I see fit! Rant over!! :)

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First try at 'distressing'....

....and Tim Holtz needn't worry about competition! :(

Having been a bit sceptical about distressing techniques I finally decided to have a little dip of a toe into the water. Hmmmm, this is the result!

For the background I just dabbed three distress ink pads (Dried Marigold, Peeled Paint and Walnut Stain.....aren't the names mouthwateringly great) onto my hot stuff mat and misted it with water. I then picked up the 'mess' with a piece of satin silk artcard from Inkylicious. This card is just great, it's at least 300gsm and I think anything less would have just freaked out at the amount of water I'd liberally sprayed! Then I dried it with my heat gun and stared at the resulting 'mess'. OK, so then I stamped a swirl (using a clear Inkadinkado stamp) in Walnut Stain...and this is where perhaps I should have left well alone. But, I misted again and lost the clear definition....boo,hoo!!

But, I'd gotten this far, so I carried out with my sows ear. I had to trim off the edges where the ink had 'pooled' a bit and then layered it onto a cream linen card. The little Gorjuss picture is from one of Gorjuss's sets of toppers and tags, the 'Dream' tag is a Tim Holtz Adage with a little bit of brown edging and the organza ribbon is from my stash (bound to be from Hobbycraft!).

Tentatively I asked the opinion of my 'in-house critic' and was told it looks a 'bit Goth-like'. Yay, just what I'd been trying to achieve - bemused look when I punched the air and hollered 'YESS!!'.

I think this distressing lark is great fun and doubt if you get the same result twice....hopefully the next try WON'T be the same...I want it to be an improvement!!

Learning all zee time though :)

Di
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A taste of the Orient

I spotted these 'cheongsam dress' peeloffs, by Anita, in The Range. Each sheet has four different designs with complimenting fans and a few flowers/embellies - they come in silver or gold. It was my first visit to one of their stores and it was like an Aladdin's Cave, so much so that I bought very little, there was too much to take in!

My mind was taken back to three fabulous years I spent in Singapore as an Army Brat a child, from the ages of 10 to 13, many years ago. What magical days those were! I always yearned to be the owner of a cheongsam, I had the slim figure then too :( Obviously I was too young to be wearing such exotic dresses but my Mum did relent and buy me some beautiful pink brocade PJ's with the top in cheongsam style! Much too hot to sleep in, no air. con in those days, just swishing ceiling fans...but great for dressing up in!


The dresses, fans and some embellies were made by sticking the peeloffs to pearlised paper from my stash and then trimming round the shapes. I've had the paper for ages and wish I could find the same pad again :( The paper down the left hand side of the card is from the Papermania Capsule Collection, silver self adhesive flowers strip from my stash (QVC), the sentiment is from Craftwork Cards and I just added a few clear diamantes (KanBan)to add a bit of 'bling'.

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