Thursday 30 May 2013

Butterfly Squares

Tuesday was also Claire's birthday.  There are several connections between Claire's family and ourselves as her dad and my other half knew each other at university, were bestmen at each others' weddings and now we have daughters, Claire and our Elaine, born just over a week apart.  Claire's grandad used to drive milk tankers and sometimes collected the milk from my dad's dairy farm.  One day he took me on a short trip with him, from our farm to my uncle's farm, and I can still remember the strange sensation there was from the milk moving around in the tank behind us.  A few years later Claire's mum and I were in the same year and knew each other at secondary school.

This is the card I made for Claire's birthday.


There were lots of bits and pieces of patterned papers left over from making the boxes of roses cards using the Nitwit Collection Romance and Roses and I managed to make this card using some of them.  The layers in the four small square sections were cut using Spellbinders plain and scalloped square nestabilites dies.  After layering the first plain square on top of the scalloped square turquoise thread was wrapped around the corners.  The smallest square was then added on top using foam pads. 


Peel off butterflies were added on top of the smallest plain square.  After being attached to acetate they were cut out and the wings folded back before the bodies were glued on to the toppers using super glue.  I have to admit to carefully measuring out where the butterflies were going to go before I glued them on.

The sentiment in the middle was made using a stamp from the Stampin' up set Petite Pairs and their melon mambo ink.  It was then punched out and layered using their large oval and scalloped oval punches.  VersaMagic chalk ink in the sea breeze colourway was sponged around the edge of the sentiment and on the scalloped edges of the base card.


Stampin' up's marina mist and melon mambo cardstock were used along with their rose red grosgrain ribbon.  Only a few self adhesive blue pearls were the other embellishments.

It's a number of years since we last saw Claire but two weeks ago she was a contestant on the television programme The Cube being supported by her boyfriend, mum and dad and a friend.  It was lovely to see what a confident young woman she's become and her prize for the night was £10,000.  A nice little nest egg for a young couple saving for their own home or maybe a wedding as Claire suggested.  

Thanks for reading my ramblings today
Liz xx

I'd like to enter this card in the following challenges




Tuesday 28 May 2013

A Box of Roses using the Promises Collection

Yesterday was the birthday of crafting buddy Susan and this is the card I made for her. 


Last week I read a post on Carol's blog where she'd used the Nitwit Collection Promises.  This is one I've been admiring for some time and on visiting the Nitwit site, after reading Carol's post, it slipped into my shopping basket.  Some of the lovely papers needed a test run and this was the result.  The colours match really well to Stampin' up's marina mist colourway and their cardstock and ribbon was used on this card.

 
It was back to my favourite dies from the Marianne English Rose die set to make more rolled roses.  The lighter coloured roses on this card were made from lilac parchment card sponged with Encore purple metallic ink and the darker roses were made from the same purple cardstock as used on the backing layers.  Leaves were punched from green parchment card and certainly celery card from Stampin' up using an X-cut embossing punch.  Stampin' up's old olive ink was sponged around the edges of the leaves.


The box of roses fits on an 8"x 8" scalloped card and is raised up on foam pads.  The parts of the lid which don't overlap the box are on double layer foam pads.  Along with the roses this makes quite a dimensional card.
 
An original Sizzix red die was used to cut the gift tags for the box and the top tag was embossed using one of Stampin' up's textured impressions designer frames.  The sentiment was made using a stamp from Stampin' up's Sincere Salutations set and the purple ink.  It was then punched out using their extra large oval punch and the purple ink was sponged around the edge.  The scalloped edges of the base card were also sponged with this ink.


The inside has a double layer insert using another patterned paper from the Promises Collection for the back layer and a message created on the computer for the top layer.  Both layers had their corners rounded off using a Woodware corner punch.

Other embellishments used were self adhesive pearls, Stampin' up's marina mist grosgrain ribbon, lilac ribbon, coiled gold beading wire attached amongst the roses and matching brads.

Unfortunately Susan has been having more than her fair share of health issues recently and has missed a few of our crafting sessions. Hopefully she was feeling well enough yesterday to enjoy her birthday celebrations.

Thanks for reading today 
Liz xx

I'd like to enter this card in the following challenges


Monday 27 May 2013

Little Miss Taylor

Last Tuesday it was the fourth birthday of a grand-niece and this is the card I made for her.


It was back to using a card and decoupage from a Create and Craft kit to make this card and again I've done a Nancy Watt by using them to make up a larger card.  I'm slowly working my way through the kit though and enjoy the challenge of finding co-ordinating cardstock and embellishments to use on each one.  This card front had a pretty decorated edge along the top and bottom so it was left as it was rather than layering it up.  Also attached to the front panel is a sentiment stamped using a stamp from Stampin' up's Petite Pairs set and punched out using their scalloped and large oval punches.  

Purple and lilac cardstock were used for the layers and the Happy Birthday paper from the Cuddly Buddly download A Patchwork of Papers Purple was printed on to the palest lilac card.  The Embossalicious 8"x 8" Regency Swirls folder was used to emboss other panels of this cardstock. 


On the panel behind the front the number four was printed from the computer and die cut and layered using a Spellbinders nestabilities labels ten die.


On the inside the little picture from the back of the original card was also die cut and layered using a labels ten die.  The verse was printed from the computer and layered behind frames cut with grand nestabilities circle dies.


My usual embellishments of lots of ribbon and bows were added along with some self adhesive pearls, peel off crystal dots and flowers punched using the Tonic small flower punch.  Encore purple metallic ink was sponged around the scalloped edges of the base card, around some of the toppers attached to the card and on the pale lilac flowers.

Here's a lovely photo of Taylor with her cake.  Clever Mummy.

Sunday 26 May 2013

Another Box of Roses in the Romance and Roses Colourway

Last weekend was the engagement party and birthday of my friend's sons and today it is their sister Eilidh's turn to celebrate her birthday.  This is another busy weekend for the Campbell family as some of them are in Glasgow because Granny and Grandad Campbell from Stornoway are across to celebrate Grandad's special birthday.  If all went according to plan then Eilidh should be celebrating her birthday in Glasgow today.  Here are a few photos from last weekend which include Eilidh.

Rachel, Eilidh and Steph


 Iain, Niall and Eilidh with their Granny Gracie


 The Campbell family including Eilidh's dog Rhylee


This is Eilidh's box of roses.


It has the same layout and colourway as the one I made for our Elaine although, along with a couple of minor changes, the patterned papers have been swapped around.  If you'd like to know more about how the cards were made and what was used then click on this link Birthday Girl.  Here are a few more photos of Eilidh's card.




We had a glorious day here yesterday and I finally started clearing weeds.  Hopefully I'll get around to planting some real flowers in their place however, as I'm not green fingered, I think I'd still prefer to be making paper ones as at least they don't need any maintenance.

Thanks for reading today
Liz xx

I'd like to enter this card in the following challenges

Saturday 25 May 2013

Glittery Eighteenth

Our neighbour Haley celebrated her eighteenth birthday yesterday and this is the card I made for her.  I'd liked how the twenty-first card I'd made for Ben had turned out so I went back to the Papeterie to get the Woodware 18th set of stamps too.  It's a great set of stamps to use if you just want to focus on the birthday or if you're not sure what the young person's particular interests are.

 
The 18 was stamped on to the positive lilac Little Swirls paper from Pink Petticoat using VersaMark ink and embossed using disco black embossing powder from Stampendous.  Once this had set then the eighteen was die cut using a square Spellbinders die and the inside of the numbers were filled with art glitter glue and lilac glitter.  It's ages since I've used this technique and I used to love watching Jane Nestorenko demonstrating it on Create and Craft.  After using it on Ben and Haley's card I'm beginning to wonder what Christmas stamps I could use it on.  A Woodware corner notch punch was used on each corner and a purple thread wrapped around the topper.  A few stray flecks of embossing powder had escaped and to camouflage this I spritzed over the topper with a lilac metallic marker from Crayola. 

 
The card was put together in three tiers with the two top tiers raised on foam pads.  On the bottom one there are layers of purple and silver mirri card and the positive silver Little Swirls patterned paper.  The corners of the patterned paper were either stitched or had corners added on top made from Happy Birthday paper printed from the Cuddly Buddly download A Patchwork of Papers Purple on to lilac parchment card from Southfield Stationers.  Unfortunately this card is now discontinued as it's one of my favourites.  

The second tier has a scalloped square cut from the negative lilac Little Swirls patterned paper. Layered on top of this is purple card, Happy Birthday paper and another layer of the negative lilac Little Swirls paper.  Corners of silver mirri card embossed with a Darice keys embossing folder were added to this layer.

The 18 topper layered on to purple and silver mirri card was the third layer.  My usual embellishments of ribbon and brads were used with the addition of two silver keys.


A double insert was made for the inside of the card using Little Swirls patterned paper for one layer and a message created on the computer for the second.

That's the last of the special celebrations cards for this month.  Just two birthday cards needed for next week.  This seems to have been an intense month of card making but all happy events.

Thanks for reading today

Friday 24 May 2013

Birthday Girl

Another person celebrating their birthday last Saturday was our Elaine and it was back to my favourite box of roses, but in a new colourway, for her card.


The patterned papers for Elaine's card are from a new Nitwit Collections digital kit called Romance and Roses which were a good match to Stampin' up's melon mambo and marina mist cardstock.  There are some lovely papers and elements in this collection.  The box of roses fits on an 8"x 8" scalloped card and is raised up on foam pads.  The parts of the lid which don't overlap the box are on double layer foam pads.

Rolled roses made using the Marianne die English rose are certainly my favourite embellishments to use at the moment and these ones were cut from card printed on both sides with two of the papers, one dark and one light patterned, from the Romance and Roses collection.  To hide the white cut edges Melon Mambo ink was sponged over the roses rolled to show the dark patterned paper on the inside. 


When the roses are added this makes quite a dimensional card as can be seen from this side view.

.
The leaves for the roses were punched using an X-cut beech leaf embossing punch and then half had their edges sponged with VersaMagic chalk ink in sea breeze and the rest were sponged with Stampin' up's island indigo ink.  The scalloped edges of the main card were also sponged with the sea breeze ink.
  
An original Sizzix red die was used to cut the gift tags for the box and the top tag was embossed using one of Stampin' up's textured impressions designer frames.  The sentiment set in the middle of the frame was stamped on to white card using a stamp from their Sincere Salutations set and melon mambo ink. It was then punched out using their extra large oval punch and around the edge sea breeze ink was sponged.


On the inside there is a double layer insert using another patterned paper from the Romance and Roses kit for the back layer and a message created on the computer for the top layer.  Both layers had their corners rounded off using a Woodware corner punch and the edges of the top layer were sponged with sea breeze ink.

Other embellishments used were self adhesive pearls, Stampin' up's marina mist and rose red grosgrain ribbon, coiled gold beading wire attached amongst the roses and gold brads.

Elaine celebrated her birthday in Edinburgh with Andy and had a great weekend even if the weather didn't play ball. Here are a few pictures of the weekend.

Meeting the Conservation Girlies for a night out on Friday night.  It's hard to believe that ten years have passed since they started the course at Aberdeen University together.  Elaine's in the middle.


Although she wasn't at home to celebrate her birthday I was amused to see the tradition of setting out cards and presents ready for opening on the birthday morning was still carried on.


After a birthday breakfast cooked by Andy the pair of them spent the rest of the day shopping and meeting a friend for lunch.


Then out for dinner at night.


The next day was spent at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and attending a Seth Lakeman concert at night.  A busy but happy weekend. 

 
It's hard to believe we're supposed to be warming up for the summer months with the wind, low temperature and the snow threatening to fall yesterday morning but twenty seven years ago on the 28th of May, as we drove away from the hospital with our new baby, the hail was hitting the roof of the car so hard that we couldn't hear ourselves talk.  

Thanks for stopping past today and reading
Liz xx 

I'd like to enter this card in the following challenges

Wednesday 22 May 2013

Birthday Time

There were birthday celebrations in the Campbell house on Saturday, as well as the engagement party on the Sunday, as it was their Iain's birthday.  Iain now lives and works in Reading but had travelled north to be home for his birthday and the engagement party.  It had been over two years since I'd last seen Iain so it was lovely to catch up again and especially to meet his lovely girlfriend Rachel.


On the Saturday Iain, his brother Niall and their Dad Philip set off to walk along The Gordon Way but got caught in the heavy rain which fell that afternoon.  From the stories we heard all three arrived back with soggy feet from the rain having dripped off their waterproofs and in to their boots.  One member of the group who had some enjoyment from the expedition was Eilidh's dog Rhylee who sourced out all the puddles. Fortunately they all dried off and polished up well for the party the next day.  Philip too works away from home and is shortly to be moving to Paris from Kazakhstan so times when they all come together at home are special and it was lovely to capture the three of them in this photo.


This is the card I made Iain for his birthday.  The post title sums up the card as it was based around these words - Birthday Time.


Blue cardstock from the Papeterie and two different patterned paper downloads were used for the layers on this card.  The gingham paper was from the Cuddly Buddly download A Patchwork of Papers Blue and the swirls paper was from Pink Petticoat's Little Swirls download in their Air Force Blue colourway.   

The layout involved making layers and toppers of large and small squares.  The three layers of the small letter toppers were cut using Spellbinders plain and scalloped square nestabilities.  Encore blue metallic ink was sponged around the small swirls squares.  After attaching the top two layers together silver metallic thread was wrapped around the corners before they were then mounted on to the backing layer using foam pads.  This added dimension to the card.  Small peel off crystal dots were added to the inside corners of the gingham squares.


Large lower case Quickutz alphabet dies in indigo font were were used to cut the letters and the little pocket watch was also cut using a Quickutz die.  Blue metallic ink was sponged around the face of the watch and also around the scalloped edges of the base card.  The TIME backing layer behind the pocket watch was created on the computer and printed on to the gingham paper.  A little piece of navy grosgrain ribbon was threaded through the fob.  


On the inside there was a double layer insert using the Little Swirls patterned paper for the back layer and a message created on the computer for the top layer.  The corners of both were rounded off using a Woodware corner punch.  

The final embellishments were silver brads added to the corners of the middle square and two of the outer corners and along with the silver metallic thread and crystal dot peel offs this added a little bit of bling.  Butcher's twine was wrapped around and tied in a bow at the fold of the card.

Of all the photos I took at the engagement party the one below is one of my favourites.  I managed to signal to Iain's Granny to sneak up and sit on his knee so I could capture them together.  Fortunately Iain took it in his stride and this was the end result.


Although this has been another lengthy post I'm hoping that having written a little bit about the recipient, and including some photos, this has made it more interesting too.

Thanks for reading today
Liz xx

I'd like to enter this card in the following challenges

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Amour à Paris......part 2

This is the card I made for Niall and Steph whose engagement and surprise party I wrote about in the previous post "Amour à Paris.......part 1".

The theme for the card was based around the proposal at the top of the Eiffel Tower.  Whilst at the Papeterie last Saturday I was lucky enough to find two sheets of Kanban card from the Lavender Rose Collection called "From Paris with Love" and they then dictated the colour scheme.


This was an ideal opportunity to use the large Stampin' up French Script stamp to create backgrounds on two of the layers of the topper.  On the lavender layer it was stamped using Encore silver metallic ink and on the top layer the stamp was lightly inked with purple metallic ink to leave a faded impression.  Over the top of this the Eiffel Tower and Amour stamps from Stampin' up's Artistic Etchings set were stamped using silver metallic ink.  This isn't a set I own but I knew a friend who did, thank you Carol.  A little gem was added to the top of the Tower to symbolise where the proposal took place. The sentiment was also a Stampin' up stamp from the Petite Pairs set and it was punched out and layered using their oval and scalloped oval punches.

Spellbinders Curved Rectangle dies were used to cut out two of the layers of the topper with a faux layer added in between.  The faux layer was made by using the smallest die as a stencil to draw around before cutting it out by hand.  The edges were distressed and inked to disguise any uneven cutting.

The champagne flutes were cut using a Marianne die and were double layered using shiny and matt silver card and in the corners the Marianne die English Rose was used to cut the large rolled roses which are my crafting addiction at the moment.  Behind the roses are silver leaves punched using an X-cut embossing punch.


Layers of silver, purple, lilac and lavender card along with the patterned card from Kanban were used to decorate the panels of the z-fold card.  The picture below is of the back of the card.  The lilac card was embossed using the Regency Swirls Embossalicious folder and the Memory Box Precious Hearts die was used to cut the heart embellishments which were also double layered.  Peel offs were used to add Steph and Niall's initials to the small hearts and the date of their engagement to the large heart.


On the inside of the card messages were created on the computer and die cut using Spellbinders heart nestabilites dies and their grand nestabilities circle dies.  More of the heart embellishments were added too.  You can see from the pictures below how appropriate the Kanban card was to the occasion.




There was even enough card left to decorate the lid of the box.


The only other additions to the card were small paper roses and rosebuds in contrasting colours, a few more sparkly gems and lots of bows and ribbons to match the backing card not that I ever need an excuse to use ribbon.

It was lovely to be able to create a personalised card for Niall and Steph and hopefully it will be a reminder of their romantic weekend in Paris.

Thanks for reading today
Liz xx

I'd like to enter this card in the following challenges
The Ribbon Girl May Colour Challenge - Lilac and Lavender
Marianne Design Diva's Monthly Challenge - Get Your Dies Out
Craft-Dee Bowz May Challenge - Anything Goes With Hand Made Bows
Crafty Boots Challenge - Celebrations
Crafty Bloggers Network Challenge - O's and X's Challenge (Ribbon/Stamps/Gems)
Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Use your favourite ink - Encore purple metallic ink which was used to stamp the French script background, the sentiment, and was sponged around the scalloped edges of the base card the edges of the curved rectangles and the rolled roses on the topper and also the heart in the inside.
Challenges 4 Everybody Challenge 20 - Anything Goes
Stamping Sensations May Challenge - Embossing and Texture 
Emerald Faerie Challenge 43 - Ribbons 
Delightful Challenges - Bingo (Patterned Paper/Punches or Dies/Flowers)
Fab'n'Funky Challenge 171 - Your Favourite Embellishment ( Rolled roses made using the Marianne English Rose die)
The Ribbon Carousel Monthly Challenge 81 - Celebrations
My Craft Spot Challenge 98 - Ribbon and Twine
LEJ Designs Challenge 54 - Die Cuts and/or Punches
Make It Monday - Anything Goes

Amour à Paris....part 1

On Sunday we attended the surprise engagement party of my friend's son and his girlfriend.  Two weeks ago Niall took Steph on a surprise weekend to Paris and proposed to her at the top of the Eiffel Tower.  Niall put a lot of thought, planning and preparation in to making the event perfect and here are the happy couple showing off the ring following the proposal.


We had a lovely time celebrating with them and their family and friends and Kathleen (Niall's Mum) had put on a huge hot and cold spread of savouries and sweets along with garnishes and breads.  It had been a hectic morning for them trying to get the happy couple out of the way so that they could prepare and decorate but all was perfect and even the sun shone.   Here are a few pictures of the day.

Niall and Steph with their beautiful engagement cake.



The figurines decorating this cupcake stand were supposed to represent how long Niall kept Steph waiting before proposing to her.  There's a little diamond ring dangling on the end of the fishing rod.

The theme for the decorations was pretty vintage with a French flavour and I think you'll agree that it was indeed very pretty.


As well as the beautiful cake there were cupcakes with matching toppers and I was fortunate enough to be given this one to take home for me


and this one for Elaine.


I've taken out my best china to photograph the cupcakes with.  Before getting married I collected a tea set and a dinner set in this pattern and apart from the salt and pepper both sets have remained unused.  I think I'll need to christen this cup and saucer before putting them back in the cupboard again.  The little doily was cut using an X-cut die.

This post has ended up so full of photos of the day that I'll start a new post with the engagement card I made for them.

Thanks for reading
Liz xx