Thinking Of You Cards – Cards for Friends – Simon Says Stamp Card Kit March 2015 – Authentique Classic Beauty Card Idea

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I work night shift and my shifts are twelve hours sometimes thirteen (like tonight) and because of not just the amount of time I work, but because it’s night shift so I tend to be sleeping when everyone else is awake doing normal things, I quite often end up neglecting my social life and thus my friends and family.

So yesterday morning, before going to bed, I spent about 15 minutes as my relax time to put together a nice little card for my dear friend Yvette, who I wouldn’t be where I am today without her.

Yvette is quite often on my mind, but being on opposite schedules means I can’t always tell her and we rarely find time to catch up with our conflicting schedules. I can’t just call or text her at 2AM in the morning when I’m wide awake having lunch at work, thinking ‘I wonder how Yvette is going’, because she’ll be in bed sleeping – and there’s nothing worse than having one’s sleep interrupted…

The card is constructed simply using the Authentique Classic Beauty pattern papers and journaling cards. I chose out the pretty picture of the lady holding the rose from the collection. I chose it for a few reasons: the image is simple and beautiful, the lady looks both sad and happy, and she seems to be looking at the flower wistfully but also fondly with amusement. So I was kinda feeling like my friend is the rose and I am the woman.

I love Yvette, I’m happy she’s my friend but at the same time I’m sad because we don’t spend much time together and I neglect her terribly.

I really tried to capture in the photo the shiny glitter I added on the rose using the Wink of Stella Clear Glitter Pen. And I added a triplet of gold rhinestones as a little design flair to finish the card off.

Do you have a friend or family member you’ve been neglecting? Is there someone you’ve been thinking of recently and would like to reconnect with? Let me know in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you.

Birthday Card Making – Simon Says Stamp Card Kit March 2015 – Authentique Classic Beauty – Birthday Card Idea – Mum’s Belated Birthday

  

This card I made for my mother’s birthday (belated) using the Simon Says Stamp Card Kit March 2015 release containing the Authentique Classic Beauty paper and coordinating journaling cards. I absolutely loved the look of this card kit and Authentique’s papers as they are all so beautiful and it really is a classy, chic combination of the greys, blacks and then that bright pop of yellow.

I started this card by flipping through the journaling cards and I found this one with the quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald ‘you are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known – and even that is an understatement.’ And I thought that was suitable to describe my mother and would be a positive note for her to receive as a birthday message.

As I had this quote and the journaling card took up the majority of the card face, I didn’t bother with any other sentiment stamps on the face of the card.

One of the papers has a newspaper style text but could also be an old style dictionary as it had words and then descriptions. At first I wanted to make sure I had the tree displayed as my mother has always loved trees and then when I looked closer I saw that there were the words mother and the description of mother and I thought, how perfect!

I had the black striped lines left over from a previous card and I really loved the gold shiny scrapbook card that was also in the card kit and I wanted this card to be shiny and bright and positive. I arranged the pattern papers to my liking and then adhered them down. I adhered the journaling card to some scrap black card stock and cut the black card stock down to size to allow a small black border. I found this helped break apart the quote from the bright, shiny gold of the main background. I adhered that using foam squares.

On the yellow rose flowers on the journaling card I used a wink of stella clear glitter pen to give a bit more shine to that part of the card, bring everything together and give the card that little something extra special. I tried to show the glitter shine on the roses, but the photos never truly capture the sparkle.

I really love how this card turned out and I enjoyed the process of making it. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.

Painting Pet Portraits – Jakob’s Birthday Present 2015 – Dog Paintings & Birthday Card

Although I wasn’t able to finish the portraits of Jakob’s pets, I was able to complete Jakob’s birthday card on time!

Growing up, us kids (and even my mother to an extent) were all Halo buffs. The Halo I’m talking about is the video-game series that has spawned an entire universe including 20 novels, live-action movies, tv-series and anime-series and multiple fan made series using the game engine. It’s won awards for its story-line/script and music. The main character of the Halo series of games is the Master Chief who is a Spartan, taking from the legend of the original Sparta Spartans, you know the 300 etc, warriors bred for war.

The Spartans in the game were taken as children, genetically enhanced and trained for combat. It’s a really epic story line, so if you haven’t read the books or played the games or seen any of the shows I really recommend them. If you’re no good at games, chances are someone you know plays and loves the series so just watch them play to get the story-line (that’s what my mum did – she watched us play. She’d get grumpy if we continued the story without her haha!)

Anyway, a big part of the Master Chief’s story is the fact that he does not surrender, he does not give up, he will defy the odds and he will win to save humanity. I think my older brother really admires that tenacity and pugnaciousness. So that’s the inspiration behind this card.

I used papers from the Basic Grey Kelly Purkey’s Second City 6 x 6 paper pad and I believe the dark navy is from the Basic Grey pb&j 6 x 6 paper pad. The card is a very simple design and construction. The papers from the Second City Collection look very futuristic and very much like a lot of the Halo HUD & menu designs.

I don’t think I need to bore you with how the card was constructed as I think any crafter would be able to figure it out by looking at it.

The quote, ‘Never Surrender’ I hand wrote with my versa mark clear embossing ink pen and I used white embossing powder and heat set it. On the inside I wrote another quote to further inspire my brother: Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength – Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Unfortunately my older brother has been cursed with bad luck and a Murphy’s law kind of life so I think it’s important to remind people, especially our loved ones, to keep on keeping on.

Jakob’s birthday present, a series of paintings of each of his dogs, was unfortunately not completed on time. If you’re interested and you missed out on the previous posts, you can check out the individual posts for each pet portrait by clicking on the name of the dog.

Toby – (center)

Ralph – (top left)

Jazz – (bottom left)

Fred – (bottom right)

Jaeger – (top right)

Above is after I decided I would have Toby as a larger canvas when I had completed Jazz and Fred and had begun work on Jaeger. I had also drawn the sketch of Ralph. I really liked the alignment of having Toby’s big rectangle canvas in the center surrounded by Jakob’s other dogs.

Another photo showing the progress – these I was taking to try and motivate me to continue. Like saying, ‘look at how awesome this is going to be when it’s finished!’ For this photo and the rest of the photos, I had changed the arrangement of Fred and Jaeger.

This one shows all four surrounding dogs complete with only Toby waiting to be finished.

And finally! All five pet portraits painted and complete. Toby really does look fantastic. I originally wasn’t going to do a background for any of them. Now with Toby looking really majestic, I’m having thoughts about putting backgrounds on the rest of the portraits.

Let me know what you think in comments below.

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp with Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine Paper Birthday Card Idea

My partner’s father also has a birthday in March. March seems to be a popular month for birthdays. This is great as it’s forcing me to make some birthday cards! But I was stuck for ideas. I really felt as though I had exhausted my creativity. After a little sook and throwing my papers in the air in an overly dramatic display of exasperation, my partner come over to the table and sat down and started playing with the supplies while giving me a pep talk.

I had just finished cutting out a little cat in a bit of a play pose and was starting to cut out another one while I was racking my brain for ideas.

My partner laughs and I look up at him and he’s says simply, ‘look he’s playing with the birds’. His innocent view on life and the boyish cheekiness is why I fell in love with him. I couldn’t help but laugh and smile. He thought I was laughing ‘at’ him initially, but I was so amazed that he had come up with such a great idea for a card. He was really chuffed that he’d actually come up with a great idea so he gave me a kiss then went back to his video games. Anyway, that’s how this card design came about!

While he was at work the next day, I started to piece together the card. I decided that it’d be great to have a whole lotta sparkle and wanted to go over the white pattern paper with the wink of stella pen. And ooops! I squeezed too hard…

Luckily I had a second piece of the pattern paper with the birds on it so I tried again. The first piece was already adhered so I cut an eighth of an inch off each end of the second piece and adhered it with foam tape to give the card a bit more dimension.

So sparkly!

For the sentiment I white embossed ‘you are’ and ‘loved’ onto a scrap piece of orange pattern paper. The sentiment stamps are from the Simon Says Stamp ‘Thinking of You’ stamp set. The inspiration for placing the ‘loved’ sentiment over the ‘you are’ sentiment comes from Vicky Papaioannou. I adhered the orange pattern paper with foam squares and used a Derwent Studio pencil to give a touch of shading to the playful kitty.

I am really pleased with the simple clean look of this card and my only input was to put glitter all over it. ^-^

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp Set Birthday Card Idea – Cute Happy Cat Stamp

My partner’s younger brother has a birthday in March and I wanted to make him a super cool card.

If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll have noticed I use the Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp Set and the Paper Smooches Spectrum Stamp Set with the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine pattern paper quite a bit. This is because I’m on a budget so I can’t buy all the new trendy items every week. I save up and a make a purchase of the items I need (with a couple wants mixed in hopefully) once every couple of months. I prefer to buy online and have the items shipped out. I’ve had the best service from http://www.123stitch.com and they have very reasonable shipping costs from US to Australia.

With all that said, I tend to make alterations to an already tried idea to try and make something new and unique each time while using minimal supplies. I love the adorable happy cat stamp in the Nine Lives Stamp Set and I thought, the more the merrier!

So I stamped (using tuxedo black memento ink) the cat twice on the orange pattern paper and once on a scrap piece of grey pattern paper with the idea of creating three cats. I stamped the mouth area three times on plain white card stock.

Using memento ink markers I shaded the tongue and mouth with black and red and then I fussy cut the three mouths out. I adhered the cut out mouths on top of the two orange cats and the one grey cat. I fussy cut the cats out and shaded them with Derwent Studio pencils. I went over the outline of the cats with a tuxedo black memento ink marker. I accidentally made a mistake on one of the orange cats so in attempt to fix the mistake, or camouflage it, I drew lines to create a striped cat.

I gathered together some scrap strips from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine paper pad.

I arranged them on the card and adhered them slightly askew to give the card a more fun and casual flair. I trimmed the excess with scissors.

When I was arranging the kitty-cats onto the card I found I wanted to have the grey cat slightly higher than the others, but it looked odd to have him sort of floating on the white pattern paper. So I cut a little scrap of blue pattern paper to place behind the kittens so that it looked as though they were sitting on a mound or cushion. Now all that was left was to stamp a sentiment! I chose the ‘you’re awesome’ sentiment, I stamped it onto white card stock and then drew a speech balloon around it. I fussy cut the balloon out and then using the memento ink marker, I traced the edges and drew a border. I adhered the speech balloon to the card using foam squares.

I was very happy with the final result. I wasn’t able to see my partner’s younger brother for his birthday but my partner informed me that the card was a smash-hit success!

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Card Idea – Vicky Papaioannou Inspired

I was really enthused after creating the cute happy cat birthday card for a friend, inspired by Vicky Papaioannou. You can check that post here. And I wanted to try something along the same lines but shake things up a bit to create something fresh. There are quite a few of my friends with birthdays in March so I thought it’d be a very practical idea to get a head start on creating some cute cards for these friends.

Keeping with the cute cat theme, I chose a different cat from the Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp set. I stamped the cat with tuxedo black memento ink on to a scrap of grey patterned paper from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine collection (my go to paper stack for birthday cards – I think I’m going to be sad when I run out).

With so many cards made using the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine papers, I had quite a few scraps left. So I gathered a few to coordinate together. The rainbow strips were already cut into workable strips so I didn’t have to alter those at all. The larger pink strip of pattern paper I used the Fiskars scalloped border punch on the long edges. And the yellow paper has ‘Hello Sunshine’ with a sun as a striped pattern on the paper so I cut two thin strips between the lines of ‘Hello Sunshine’ from a larger strip of scrap pattern paper.

To the larger pink pattern paper with the scalloped edge, I created an embossed background. The inspiration from Vicky Papaioannou starts to become evident in this step. I wiped down the paper with an anti-static pouch to prep the area for embossing. I used the range of smaller catty item stamps in the Paper Smooches Nine Lives stamp set stamped where I could fit them using Ranger’s embossing ink. I used white embossing powder then heat set the powder. Just like in the previous card, I used stickles on the bottles to create interest.

There was a gap left at the bottom when I was creating the embossed background, mostly because I had smudged a fishbowl and had removed it. I wasn’t fazed as I had planned to place the cute kitty cat at the bottom in that area anyway. I decided to use the ‘you’re purrty’ sentiment stamp and decided where I wanted to place it by using the clear acrylic block with the stamp clinging to it.

I decided to keep the sentiment simple and stamped it using tuxedo black memento ink onto plain white card stock. I trimmed the cardstock down and then adhered it to the card using foam squares. I decided to add a little shading to the cat as well using the Derwent Studio pencil in Gun Metal Grey.

I was really pleased with the final result and I can’t wait to give it to the birthday girl!

Link to Vicky Papaioannou’s Clips-n-Cuts website; the inspiration for this card:

http://www.clips-n-cuts.com/2013/03/how-to-video-and-giveaway/

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Card Idea – Vicky Papaioannou Inspired

This card I made for my cowgirl friend’s sister. They both have birthdays in February. Similarly to the previous card post, I was strapped for time and so once again fell back on Vicky Papaionnou to inspire me with her creations. This was another card I’ve been wanted to make. I didn’t have the ‘My Minds Eye’ paper pack that Vicky uses but I still had my go to papers, the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine 6 x 6 paper pack.

I really liked this card because it was simple and came together really quickly, but as well as that it was a way to use up some scraps that had been accumulating. I used a scrap piece of grey pattern paper with a polkadot pattern and stamped the adorable cat stamp from the Paper Smooches Nine Lives stamp set. I shaded him using my Gunmetal Grey Derwent Studio pencil. I stamped the cat again onto a scrap of white card stock and used Memento ink pens in black and red to colour the mouth and then I adhered it. He’s so cute and happy!

Using some scraps I had a wider piece of blue pattern paper already the perfect size for the card. I cut two strips of the yellow ‘hello sunshine’ paper and then using the Fiskars scallop border punch I punched a scallop border on two scrap strips of pink pattern paper. One of the borders I punched wonky, but it’s not to bad and the other side the punch had a hiccup and so a bit of the white paper showed through. I used my finger nail to tuck it under and hide it away after it was adhered to the card.

Speaking of adhering things to the card. I had to use black card stock as I have run out of white card stock but I think if anything the black enhances the colour as they’re so drastically bright in comparison and so the colours really stand out, in my opinion.

Once I had it adhered down I used Rangers Heat It Embossing Ink and I stamped the milk bottles, fish bones and bowls onto the blue strip. I possibly should have done it in sections as I was having trouble seeing where I had stamped, and better yet should have done it on the blue strip before adhering it on the card as I heat set some spots onto the black background of the card accidentally, but I that’s all hindsight and I was rushed! I used WOW white embossing powder and the Heat It Craft Tool to emboss and heat set.

Once the embossing was complete, including the sentiment ‘have a purrrfect day’, I used some stickles glitter to fill in the milk bottles. I cut the sentiment into a ribbon shape (I can never get the triangles equal) and then I adhered the cute kitty cat and the sentiment ribbon using foam squares. I was super pleased with the outcome and I really love the look of this card.

Just like the previous unicorn card, I’d love to recreate this card with a few variations. If struggling through my mistakes, this was a fun card to make.

Link to Vicky Papaioannou’s Clips-n-Cuts website; the inspiration for this card:
http://www.clips-n-cuts.com/2013/03/how-to-video-and-giveaway/

Valentines Day Card Making – Basic Grey pb&j & Kelly Purkey Mon Ami Pattern Paper

Valentines Day has been and gone all too quickly. Unfortunately I was working that night and my boyfriend and a football meet that lasted all day so we didn’t do anything special for the day. While I was at work when it was quiet I made a Valentines Day card so that a coworker could give his pregnant girlfriend something nice. That’s the downside with night shift work, it’s hard to get out to the shops to buy cards or presents, so he was grateful he could still manage something special.

He started me off in the right direction by telling me her favourite colour. So I started flipping through my Basic Grey 6 x 6 paper pads.

I decided on a floral pattern paper in blue hues from the pb&j paper pad with a complimentary plain blue paper from the Kelly Purkey Mon Ami paper pad.

I cut the floral pattern paper to fit on a standard size card base.

I cut a strip of the plain blue to use as an accent piece and anchor.

I found a third complimentary pattern paper and cut a rectangle to use as the sentiment banner.

I drew some hearts on the scrap pieces of paper then fussy cut them out.

Using foam squares I adhered them on top of each other to create some cute embellishments and add a bit of pizzazz to the card.

I adhered the floral background to the card base and adhered the plain blue stripe to the right-hand side.

Then I adhered the heart embellishments in the bottom left-hand side corner using the foam squares.

I used the versamark embossing ink pen to write the sentiment (my hand writing is atrocious) and heat set black embossing powder. The sentiment banner was adhered with foam squares also.

My coworker then filled out the inside with his message of love. Hope everyone had a special Valentines Day!

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches 9 Lives & Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine Idea

This card I slapped together for a co-worker’s birthday. It didn’t turn out exactly as I had hoped, but I think the finished result still looks fun and happy. I used papers from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine card pack.

I cut the multi-coloured spot paper to fit within the card dimensions as the main background then using scrap papers. I cut strips to make the middle orange and blue stripes and I cut balloon shapes. I used Ranger Inkessentials Glossy Accents on the ballons to try and give them a bit more interest and dimension. The paper just kind of curled and looked weird though, haha.

I adhered the balloons to the orange strip of paper and drew the strings in a stitch pattern using a white gel pen. I used a versamark embossing ink pen to write ‘Happy Birthday’ on another scrap bit of paper and then I used embossing powder and heat set the powder with a Heat It Craft Tool.

The happy, cheeky cat is stamp from the Paper Smooches 9 Lives stamp set. I stamped him onto the orange pattern paper and I also stamped his face onto white card stock. I cut the eyes and teeth from the white card stock then adhered it over the orange pattern paper. I adhered the cat using foam squares. I think the cat really ties the card together and makes it look like he’s let the balloons go by running past them.

This was a good card to use up scraps and I’m really surprised by how many cards a 6×6 paper pack can make!