A spring wedding card…

Today I thought that I would share a card I made earlier in the year for an old college friend. I wasn’t able to attend the wedding, so wanted to send something extra special to let her know that I would be thinking about her on her special day.

I made an A5 card base from some sturdy white linen card, adding a simple plain vellum insert. The edged organza ribbon was wrapped round the inside of the card front to disguise the DST holding the insert in place, and tied in the top front corner.

The photo is one I chose from my pack of Joanna Sheen’s Victorian Photographs, backed onto some more of the linen card. I then wrapped each corner of the topper with lazer cut lace strips. The bouquets were constructed using a selection of Joanna’s Paper Flowers, tied with more edged organza ribbon, and then securely fixed to the edges of the photo with a firm glue before being further embellished with lazer cut hearts.

I decorated the back of the card simply with two more lazer cut hearts.

A box was constructed using double sided white pearlescent card stock, similiar to Stardream Card and decorated with more lazer cut hearts, embellished with Self Adhesive Pearls. The card was wrapped in pearly white tissue paper before being secured in the box with another length of edged organza.

I was, and still am, very happy with this card and feel that it’s one the best things I’ve ever made, so I hope that you enjoy looking at it too

Keep well everyone and look forward to posting again soon.

Jo XX

 

After the drought…

Well, what a relief to finally be able to do some crafting! The long drought was brought about by my arch nemesis, Sciatica, which comes and goes with no discernible trigger – one of life’s mysteries.

Not wishing to dwell upon that any longer, I’d like to share a baby card with you which is long overdue, as the baby wasn’t and is fast becoming not so little lol.

 

I chose the beautiful image from Joanna Sheen’s Cardmaker’s Year, CD 1, May’s chapter. I printed a sheet of toppers onto some thin linen card, and then used borderless print to print one of the backing papers onto a heavier A4 linen card, which was folded to make the A5 card base, and wrapped in a piece of white lace printed vellum, which was in turn corner punched. I added a strip of yellow satin ribbon front and back of the base card to hide the securing tape for the vellum, and added a thinner pink satin ribbon to the front, tying a bow. The yellow bow was added seperately, secured beneath a Scrapbook Sally flower, held by a green crystal brad. The main image was mounted onto pink and green before being added to the vellum, and then I added further flowers with crystal brads; two little pink brad feet in one corner, and used peel offs for the wording. The image on the back of the card is mounted onto pink only. An insert was printed from Joanna Sheen’s Jayne Netley Mayhew Collection and added with a generous amount of DST in order to cover the brad backs.

The wrapping paper is from the second backing paper in the set, printed onto reasonable copy paper, the tag being another small image from the topper sheet, backed onto pink and with a tie of pink ribbon added.

I hope that you like this project and would appreciate your comments. Keep well everyone and have a good day – hopefully I’ll post again tomorrow

Thank you for visiting my Blog,

Jo XX

 

A very happy bunny…

I am amazed and thoroughly delighted to have won 4th prize in Glenda’s Christmas Challenge, (entries),(results), this is the first time that I’ve won anything for crafting and I’m totally made up.

Many, many congratulations to Deby (1st and 2nd) and Cazzie (3rd) for your most beautiful pieces of work, and congratulations to everyone else as well – the entries were all lovely, which makes me feel very humbled to have won a place. Thank you to everyone who voted for me, I am so touched that you liked my card enough to do that, it means such a lot, thank you so much.

The winners have been given the chance to chose some stamps from Glenda’s new Christmas range, and for me there wasn’t a question as to which I would chose. They are all stunning themeplates, but the Tiffany lamps and beautiful snow scene on the ‘Hearth and Home’ plate stood out instantly for me when I first saw them on Glenda’s blog, and I am so excited at the prospect of playing with them soon. Thank you for such a generous prize Glenda.

Aside, I’ve been having trouble with a flare up of my Sciatica, and back things in general, so haven’t managed much crafting over the last week or so but will aim to post another card tomorrow. I hope that the heat isn’t getting you all down too much, at least it is slightly cooler now, if not as comfortable as we would wish.

Take care for now,

Jo

 

A double pocket card for a little girl…

I needed a card for my friend’s little girl’s 3rd birthday, and thought that using Ann’s double pocket 6×6 card technique would fit the bill. I didn’t have any 12×12 card stock, so used some 12×12 pre-embossed white paper instead, adding pink card stock to the inner back flap to give the card back the necessary weight. The self adhesive ribbon along the pocket edges and the embossed fairy stickers are from a fairy card kit featured on Create and Craft a while back. I made the tags simply by applying 3 stickers onto more of the pink card stock, adding ties of gingham ribbon to finish. It doesn’t show on the photo, but there are little flying butterflies embossed onto the 12×12 paper.

I’m off to try and cool down now, boy it’s hot isn’t it lol?

Take care

Jo

 

Two birthday cards…

I have the pleasure of being a member of a forum birthday list, for which I needed four cards for July, and so here I am showing you the first two.

I have used quite a few products from Joanna Sheen’s online shop, a link to which is opposite in the Craft Goodies section. Like so many people, I find Joanna’s products top class, especially the backing paper pads which are as luxurious as they are beautiful. I really like Joanna’s decoupage range too, as it is superbly printed onto nicely weighted paper, and the Flora Doodles range that Joanna stocks is fabulous ~ I mix and match between sets, as I have done here, making them even more versatile.

For this card, the background paper was taken from Joanna’s Art Nouveau Patterns pad, and mounted onto green Alchemy card. I then prepared the images and greeting from a decoupage sheet taken from Joanna’s Kate Greenaway collection and layered these onto green Alchemy card also, adding some tied Craft Fairy ribbon at either end of the greeting. Then I took some fabric mesh from my craft box and wrapped this around the first layer, adding the image and greeting using foam tape. Finally I attached some Daisy Box Blends Flora Doodles, using button brads, before attaching the topper to an A5 gold Alchemy card base, again with foam tape. The insert was made from plain cream card stock. 

I made this card in a similiar fashion:

 

Again, the background paper was from Joanna’s Art Nouveau Patterns pad, and the decoupage from her Kate Greenaway Collection. This time the base card was ivory and the layers matted onto pale pink.

I hope that you enjoy these cards and that everyone has had a good day and hasn’t been too uncomfortable in the heat. Take care everyone  

Jo

 

Blue and brown…

This is a card that I made for a crafty friend of mine. I set myself a challenge to think out of the box and use a colour combination away from my norm, the result being a card with a vague retro feel.

A wide pale blue fabric ribbon was wrapped top to bottom around an Opal Stardream DL card base. The topper was made from floral vellum taken from PM’s Exquisite Vellum collection, backed onto red-brown card stock, secured with brads. Butterflies, printed onto acetate from Joanna Sheen’s Victorian Companion CD set, were added, along with self adhesive pearls as the heads. The sentiment is some HOTP wording mounted onto blue cardstock. I added a simple vellum insert. I hope that you like it.

I’m so pleased that the sun is shining today, although I’m trying to fight off a looming cold so am not in the best of moods to fully appreciate it lol. Hope that everyone else is having a good day.

Jo

 

Glenda’s Christmas challenge

This is my offering for Glenda’s Christmas challenge.

  

I stamped and embossed (using Sparkle & Sprinkle Peacock embossing powder) the image onto vellum and mounted 4 decoupaged layers onto white hammer card. This was mounted onto an A5 card blank, made from white hammer card printed on both sides from the Artylicious Season’s Greetings CDs. I have added a vellum insert, and embellished with pastel self adhesive pearls and a white tassel.

Lavender Breeze

 

Beautiful Cat

As a starting point, I thought that I would share a card that I made a few months ago for my mother in law’s birthday, themed on her cat who is featured in my blog header. As you can see, he is gorgeous – a Burmese / tabby cross, with the most amazing personality and loved by everyone he meets.

Beautiful Cat

The card base was a gold linen card blank I had in stock, dressed with a pricked sunflower vellum wrap, secured with tape and organza ribbon. The stamp is from Joanna Sheen’s Cats unmounted stamps sheet, stamped and embossed onto a piece of gold linen card, and also stamped into a triple embossed Stampbord piece, which was firstly coloured with chalk ink, and then edged with gold Pentouch. The paper sunflowers finally added were also from Joanna Sheen’s online shop.

Lavender Breeze.

 

Well, here goes…

…I’ve taken the plunge, and now face the challenge of getting to grips with this wonderfully weird world of blogging. I’m sure that the mist will clear in time, but while I decipher the technical stuff, please bear with me.

Lavender Breeze