February Birthday Cards

 There's a few birthdays in the family during February, I already had the women's cards covered as I have plenty of girly birthday cards made up ready to send...it's just men's cards that are awkward. Why are cards for men so difficult to make??

My Dad's birthday rolls up first so I thought I'd have a play with my new stamp set from February's card club. Really like the set and it's easy to make it look like a masculine card too.

I've used:

• Celebrate Today stamp set
• Balloon Framelits dies
• Real Red ink
• Marina Mist ink
• Pacific Point ink
• Daffodil Delight ink
• Baked Brown Sugar ink
• Early Espresso ink
• Dimensionals
• White cardstock
• Yellow cardstock

  Then it was Baz's so I thought I'd use a humourous set from last years SU Sale-a-bration goodies.

 I've used:

• Real Red cardstock
• Baked Brown Sugar cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Real Red ink
• Memento black ink
• Baked Brown Sugar ink
• See Ya Later stamp set
• Decorative Dots embossing folder

 That's it for birthday cards this month but there'll be more Celebrate Today cards from this month's card club being shared soon.

Making A Peg Bag

Presents for grandparents are not an easy thing, if they want something they've probably already gone and bought it for themselves by now anyway. So for my Nan's birthday this year I decided to try out a sewing pattern I'd been keeping hold of from a magazine for ages.

The pattern was for a peg bag, not a massively exciting present but handmade and something that she couldn't just nip into the shops and buy.

Here's what the peg bag looks like.

The hardest part of this project was trying to find a curved small wooden hanger to fit into the peg bag, in the end I bought some kids wooden hangers from Ikea and they are perfect for the job. As my hanger is a slightly different shape to the simple curved one used in the pattern the end result of my project is slightly different to the original pattern but that just adds my own personal twist to it.

 

The lining fabric is from a stash I bought at a vintage show a couple years back that I've just never found a good use for until now. Be prepared to see more of the outside fabric in a post I'll be sharing after Christmas as I've used it for someone's Christmas present. The bag is held closed by a chunky vintage deep pink button and a small loop of ribbon.

Here's hoping Nan likes her new peg bag and she doesn't think I've given her a dull birthday present.

Flower Birthday Cards

In my organised state using my rest days to get things made I've made both of my Nan's birthday cards early too! Cue playing with more Stampin Up sets that I can't wait to use.

 

The first card is for my Nan whose birthday is November 11th hence making the flower look like a poppy.

This card used:

• Cherry Cobbler Blendabilities
• Blended Bloom stamp
• Sassy Salutations stamp set
• Real Red ink
• Jewels Basic Rhinestone
• Memento ink
• Ivory cardstock (non SU)
• Black stitched ribbon (non SU)

The second card is for my other Nan whose birthday isn't till mid December but I was in the flow of making cards so I thought I'd best make it while I had a design in my head.

This card used:

• Perfectly Penned stamp
• Stippled Blossoms stamp set
• Strawberry Slush ink
• Pink Pirouette ink
• Bermuda Bay ink
• Coastal Cabana ink
• Pistachio Pudding ink
• Gumball Green ink
• Coastal Cabana cardstock
• Pink Pirouette taffeta ribbon
• Ivory cardstock (non SU)

 Here's hoping they both like their cards.

September Birthday Cards

 So there's 2 birthdays in September in the family (well 3 if you count me) so I made some cards.

The first was for my boyfriend and like me he likes planes... I found a use for the Stampin up set Plane and Simple that my demo friend hunted down for me..added a little bit of Gorgeous Grunge and this is the quick card I came up with.

 Then we had his mum's 50th birthday at the end of September so I dragged out some more Stampin Up favourities of mine. Love the Petite Petals punch and Sassy Salutations stamp set so of course they had to be used. The pearls and card blank aren't Stampin Up but all the card for the flowers was made using little offcuts from other projects using Crisp Cantelope, Pistachio Pudding, Strawberry Slush and Coastal Cabana cardstock.

Blended Bloom and Blendabilities

Just got my hands on some of the new Stampin Up kit for 2014... I've started with the new Blended Bloom Stamp and 2 sets of Blendabilities.

After a quick lesson in how to use Blendabilities (thanks Paula) I had a go at whipping up a sympathy card for a friend who lost a dear family member recently. I even learnt that clear buttons can be coloured in using Blendabilities too!

I've used:

• Blended Bloom stamp
• Daffodil Delight Blendabilities
• Summer Starfruit cardstock
• Summer Starfruit ribbon
• Love & Sympathy sentiment
• Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad
• Decorative Label punch

 Then I moved on to a birthday card for another friend, much easier to make.

 For this card I tried out my new Cherry Cobbler Blendabilities... I can see this Blended Bloom getting used quite a bit for a while longer now, especially if you see how many cards using it I've pinned on Pinterest. My Stampin Up Inspiration board is here.

I'm impressed with the new Blendabilities but you do have to let them dry before you get the full effect of how they are going to come out. I was a bit put off when I put the darker colours on as I never thought they wouldm blend or look half decent with the really light pen in the kit....I have been proven wrong and now I think I need more sets of these in the other colours too!

 

June Card Club

 This month's card club saw us trying out some new ideas and some non-standard design cards...We made a pop-up box card and  handbag for storing some cards in.

 Love the idea of a pop-up box card...though I once again didn't stick to the design of the sample card, I changed the stamp set I used to better suit the person who will receive the card.

For the pop-up box card I used:

• Midnight Muse cardstock
• The Open Sea stamp set 
• Sassy Salutations stamp set
• Wild Wasabi ink
• Crumb Cake ink

 

For the card and handbag we used:

• Tempting Turquoise ink
• Raspberry Ripple ink and cardstock
• Daffodil Delight ink
• Wild Wasabi ink
• Baked Brown Sugar Ruffle Stretch Trim
• Large Pearl Basic Jewels 
• Petite Petals stamps set and punch
• Chalk Talk stamp set

 Don't they look great together, could use the handbag for so many other gift bag ideas too.

Butterfly Birthday Cards

 Love the Stampin' Up Pappillon Potpourri stamp set so much and the punches are great too, even if you don't have/want to use the stamps you can still punch out coloured/patterned butterflies.

Whipped up a couple of quick, bright and bold butterfly birthday cards...

 The first is made using non Stampin' Up inks and cardstock.

  Both cards use Sassy Salutations stamp set for the sentiment, stamped using black StazOn...I know I always use Sassy Salutations but they are so easy and versatile to use for any type of card.

This second card uses Stampin' Up inks:

• Strawberry Slush
• Coastal Cabana
• Pistachio Pudding
• Crisp Canteloupe

May Card Club

 May's Stampin' Up card club with Paula of Knall Crafting was all about Papillon Potpourri...everybody else bought Bermuda Bay as their ink for this class but as I already had it I went for a different colour, Real Red, to build my collection up. As well as the ink I also got a reel of Real Red Taffeta Ribbon to play with on my cards.

 All of the cardstock I used was Whisper White and Real Red.

 Ads you can see for most of my cards I decided to use Sassy Salutations, I know it's no surprise as I do love this set so much. For some of the cards I changed which of the larger butterflies I used as well as I prefer the flower print on to the detailed drawn one.

It's cards like this one that make me think I need to get the Flowering Flourishes stamp set as it really is a great set to use.

 For this card we used a circular mask and brought out the Gorgeous Grunge set from the April class and stamped using the smallest of the paint splats before then removing the mask and stamping the stripes over the top. The large butterfly was punched out of plain Whisper White card using the Elegant Butterfly punch and then sponged with ink using daubers. Think this is my favourite card from the class actually.

 This simple yet elegant card using the Simply Scored Scoring Tool for the embossed (or debossed as I chose to use them) lines and happy birthday wishes sentiment from the Petite Pairs stamp set.

 For this card we used the small butterfly silhouette and then the Bitty Butterfly punch to punch it out. Using the card scrap we punched an Elegant Butterfly out of earlier as a mask we could then sponge dauber ink to produce 3 more butterflies 'flying' up the card. The sthank you sentiment comes from the Blooming With Kindness stamp set.

 Once again Paula made us a lovely gift...this time it was an A6 notepad using some of the new watercolour papers for the tag and the tag topper punch too.

Been Making Totes

So I mentioned in my earlier post Elephant Make Up Bag that I was going to be making a lot of fabric presents for friends and family this year.. well here are the presents for the May birthday ladies.

The first tote was for my Mum and she has an obsession with hearts, so I used some of the leftover fabric I had from the apron I made her.

 The second tote was for a friend who works for VW so when I saw this super VW camper van fabric I knew I had to get some and make her something from it.

 I faffed about with where to cut the sections from the piece of fabric I had to make sure both sides had a full camper van on. As there's so many cool campers on the fabric I made sure both sides had a different coloured camper showing so she can decide which side should be showing depending what colour she likes on the day.

Great present to give people and really easy to whip up...can see a few more of these being given out as presents this year!

May Birthdays

 Finally got round to making some cards when I'm not at card club! These cards are for our friends and family who have birthdays in May.

 Even managed to use one of my Sale-a-bration freebies that's been sat around in the drawer while I've pinned loads of ideas using the set.

Made using:

• Petal Parade stamp set
• Sassy Salutations stamp set
• Crisp Canteloupe cardstock
• Pistachio Pudding cardstock
• Crisp Canteloupe ink
• Pistachio pudding ink

 Making mascualine cards is always such a struggle, good thing I got myself a bundle of blues and turquoise inks recently.

Made using:

• Gorgeous Grunge stamp set
• Sassy Salutations stamp set
• Bermuda Bay ink
• Coastal Cabana ink
• Pacific Point ink

 First outing for the giant butterfly stamp I got last year...even managed to find some ribbon in my box that perfectly matched the bermuda bay ink and it's non SU.

Made using:

• Swallowtail stamp
• Sassy Salutations stamp set
• Bermuda Bay cardstock
• Bermuda Bay ink
• Basic Pearl Jewels

As everyone should have received asnd opened them by now it's safe to publish this post, hopefully they all liked their cards too.

Marvel Birthday Card

 I get some unusual requests for card orders and this one was certainly a challenging one, from a regular customer. This one was for her grandson's birthday.

The brief was:

• Number 3
• Kai (his name)
• Marvel characters (had to include Captain America, Hulk, Spiderman and Iron Man)
• Bright colours

 So here's how I put all the requested details together.
 

I tried to keep the colourschem simple as just blue, white, red and yellow...with a little green for Hulk, any more green would have been too much for the card, I did play around with green more and it just didn't work.

I even hand drew all the characters, which was not the easiest thing to do, many attempts at each character till I found a comic book cover that had the perfect pose of \captain America, Hulk and Spiderman that I could draw for myself. I coloured them using watercolour pencils.

 Now I didn't forget Iron Man...I just couldn't get him to fit on the front of the card with the other charcters.. couldn't leave hiom out either as he's Kai's favourite character so I decided to put him inside the card to make the insert more interesting.

Elephant Make Up Bag

Been trying to get myself a little organised on the birthday presents front, a few ladies I call friends will be getting fabric goodies for their presents this year....

I started with the smallest fabric make as it can be the most frustrating to get right, pesky zips never sew in quite how I want them the first time...

Saw this elephant fabric as a fat quarter at a craft show and just had to have it, made this make up bag/pouch from it and still have loads left over, think I can squeeze another 2 pouches out of it too :)

 

Love the bright colours of the fabric and the lining fabric inside is a coordinating red flowery patterned fabric...forgot to sew one of my homemade labels in before I sewed the lining together so I shall have to handstitch it in before I give the pouch away as a present...

Next up is a few tote bags for friends and perhaps matching make up pouches too...

Handbag Birthday Card Order

I've recently completed and posted an order for a 30th birthday card. The customer asked for something personal that suited their daughter and gave me the following details to work from:

Becky is turning 30, likes shoes and handbags and her birthstone is aquamarine. 

So this is what I came up with...

 I made a handbag shaped card, used aquamarine coloured gems to form a 30 and made a happy birthday using a text die. I used the Stampin Up Top Note Bigz die for the bag flap and a chunky metal button to replicate the bag clasp. To make it personal to Becky I wrote her name on both ends of the bag strap to look like stitching.

Not forgetting the fact the Becky also loves shoes I used the Stampin Up Fabulous You stamp set to stamp this beautiful floral shoe on the card insert. I really love this shoe stamp it's so pretty! 

The customer really liked the card when it arrived with her so lets hope Becky likes it just as much too!

New Card Club

I recently found an SU demo that lives a few miles down the road from me, after a few facebook messages I booked on to one of her card classes.. turns out it was her first official class too... exciting!

Slightly different set up to the card classes I normally go to, this time we bought a kit of most of the bits we would need for the class and made all the cards from the same colourscheme and stamp sets. Great way to learn to use a small bundle of bits in different ways to suit different styles of card.

  

We used:

• Petite Petals stamp set
• Petite Petals punch
• Pink Pirouette inkpad
• Chocolate Chip inkpad
• Pink Pirouette cardstock
• Whisper White Cardstock
• Pink Pirouette taffeta ribbon
• Apothecary Accents framelit
• Scallop Tag Topper punch
• Basic Pearl Jewels
• Stripes embossing folder
• Blooming With Kindness stamp set

 

I like trying different card classes, gives me the chance to meet new people and get inspired by the different ways people use the same kit. Quite exciting to find another crafty person so near to home too!