Friday 24 March 2017

Get me to the Church on time.....

A good crafting friend of mine got married last weekend and I felt it was an ideal opportunity to make a full-on wedding card with all the trimmings.

I wanted it to be elegant, romantic and intricate but without being too schmaltzy and over fussy. Quite a tall order, but this is what I came up with.



So, first and foremost I decided on the beautiful heavy cream colour card by SU called Very Vanilla. This is a gloriously rich colour card and is amazingly smooth, so looks instantly classy. 

I wanted to keep the colour palette subtle and subdued, so I chose a very pretty tiny floral DSP from SU in Sahara Sand which blended with the cream.

Now for the special intricate elements. I love trellis patterned cards that are lifted away from the base and found a beautiful square one called 'wire' by  Amy Designs. I suppose if you look very closely it resembles wire, but it just looked like netting to me, and I cut it out from matching cream pearlescent card.

I painstakingly cut tiny slivers of foam to lift this round the edges and also stuck a few dimensionals under the centre area where I knew it would be covered by embellishments and stuck it onto a square of Very Vanilla card.

I had already decided on a small square die motif from a Spellbinders set for the centre piece and I also cut this from the cream pearlescent card,  but before I adhered this, I wrapped beautiful 1" wide satin ribbon in matching rich cream around the centre of the trellis element, sticking it with tape at the back.

I started to assemble the card. A Very Vanilla square card base with a small floral mat on top. Then the trellis element

The next addition was a central disc which I gold embossed with a sentiment from an SU stamp  set  and punched out the with my SU punch, which was the perfect size. This was placed in the very centre of the card.

I tied a nice generous bow with the satin ribbon and attached it using a hot glue gun and it look ed good, but still needed a little something to make it really special.

I tried rhinestones, but I prefer them with white card, cream seems to cry out for pearls so I found some nice slightly coffee coloured stick on pearls and added them sparingly.

It still looked unfinished and I tried several things and eventually I hit on dazzling diamond cardstock from SU and punched out a cluster of tiny flowers using the retired Itty Bitty punch, but almost any tiny flower would do.  I glued these down here and there and finished them with the same tiny pearls.

It looked great. The glitter paper glimmered with rainbow tones and looked so pretty.

I must say I was thrilled with how the card looked and felt I'd done my friend proud and knew that she was one person who would appreciate all the effort that went into it. I kept all my wedding cards and I hope she will keep this one as one of her memories of her special day.

Hope you like this card too. Thanks for stopping by.

Jane


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Wednesday 22 March 2017

Any colour - as long as it's black and white!


My daughter gave me my orders for her birthday card - "it has to be black and white". Quite tricky if you don't want to end up with something that looks like a funeral card!

Well this is what I came up with and I have to say I think it's one of my most favourite cards I've ever made.  As usual, my poor photography doesn't really show it to its best advantage but it is smart, chic and elegant.

I started with no very clear idea or plan of what to make, but I searched through my paper stash looking for black and white patterned paper. Different size stripes, spots, big patterns, small patterns - I laid them out and made my selection. I used a sheet of paper from a Becky Higgins Project Life paper pack. This is a lovely assortment of black and white papers with some orange thrown for good measure.



I cut and pasted a piece of the large irregular spot paper onto a black base card and decided to keep things simple and dramatic.

I cut a beautiful fancy label from a set of Spellbinder dies - decorative but quite bold - using the beautiful gold foiled paper/card fromStampin' Up!  I've said before, this card is far better than cheaper gold mirror card Ive used before and I wish you could see just how densely golden this card is. 

The label die comes with a corresponding inner die and I used this to cut out the sentiment, which I had previously laser printed and foiled using Heidi Swapp gold foil and my Minc machine. I glued this white strip to the gold label and played around trying it against different papers..  I cut a larger strip of black card and rounded the corners with a corner punch. Something was missing though when I tried this against the spot paper. Eventually I found a narrow black and white striped paper from the same paper pack that looked good, so I cut a strip from this and layered it behind the black card.

I elevated the gold label by backing it with a piece of fun foam and was almost on the point of sticking it down, when I grabbed a bit of gold glitter washi tape and stuck it down on the black card before adding the label.

That bit of washi tape made all the difference. It broke up the straight lines and pulled the whole design together.

I gold embossed a sentiment inside the card and I'm happy to report that my daughter was highly delighted with it! Success! And no mean feat with my daughter (who has a degree in art) let me tell you!

I hope you like this monochromatic card as much as I do. Thanks for stopping by.

Jane




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Tuesday 7 March 2017

Something completely different!

I'm leaving the fussy dies in their packets for the moment and making a bold graphic card to celebrate a birthday.

I absolutely love these word dies - they are snappy and simple - and lots of firms are making different versions of the more popular words like "congratulations" or "thanks" or "love", and I've found them very useful,  particularly for cards for younger people or men! You only have to look in the High Street card shops to see how fashionable cards are featuring different fonts.

This particular die is by a hero of mine - Heidi Swapp - and is a bit larger than most and so it can take centre stage on a card with very little additional elements.



I covered a blank base card with a piece of grey striped paper and then die cut three copies of the word "happy" from bright fuchsia pink pearlescent card from The Paperbox Company. Three copies because I wanted to stick them one on top of each other to create more depth and a greater 3D effect than usual. It's a little tricky but worth it sometimes.

The small flower motif was hand stamped with elements from the Simon Says Stamp set   "Roses for You" and hand coloured with watercolour paints. I tried to keep it simple in line with the modern look of the card.

I laser printed the word "birthday" onto some black Canson paper and foiled it with gold Heidi Swapp foil and a Minc machine. 

Very simple but very effective, I think, and to show you the same die but in a totally different colour, here is one I made for my son's birthday tomorrow.





Basic black card base which I have stamped with versamark and heat embossed with clear transparent embossing powder. I used a wonderful background stamp from Hero Arts called Pearl Strings and when this is embossed, it gives the paper an almost snakeskin look.  I've tried to take another photo to show this but it really doesn't do it justice because it gleams like patent leather.

This time I've cut the same die out of beautiful copper pearlescent card from The Paperbox Company, added a strip of black card laser printed and foiled with gold Heidi Swapp foil and added a punched out gold foil star and gold pearl. It looks very snazzy.

Thanks for dropping by

Jane