A card for Victoria

Some of you might have seen out there in card-making blogland that lots of people are making cards for a young lady called Victoria. Victoria has cancer and her teacher is trying to help her achieve the goal of receiving cards from every state in the US. I thought it would be fun to join in and send one from England so here's my card for Victoria:



The deadline is 27th September so there's still a couple of days if you want to join in. There are details here.

Supplies: Singing Swirly Bird stamp (Cornish Heritage Farms), Hello stamp (Woodware), Ranger Archival jet black and Whispers Rich Plum ink pads, Prismacolor pencils (mulberry and canary yellow) and Sansodor, vellum embossed with Cuttlebug D'vine swirls folder, silver thread, sewing machine, scallop frame cut on CraftRobo, ribbon from stash, chipboard tag made from thick packaging card, silver glitter gel pen.

Some cards I've made this week!

I thought I'd blog a few things I've made this week and shown only of the forum they fit into a challenge on!



I found out that one of my customers is moving on to a new job and thought it would be nice to send her a little card to congratulate her. Adding spotty ribbon meant that it fit in with the Get Spotted challenge on Carolyn's, too.

NEW JOB is stamped with the See-D Typewriter alphabet set in Whispers Sugarloaf Green on green cardstock. I've rounded off one corner and inked the edges, too. The little flower is made with the QK football die for the centre and punched hearts for petals. The good luck stamp is from a HOTP set and I used Tangerine Cat's Eye chalk ink.

One of DH's colleagues had his 60th birthday this week. At short notice, I was asked to make a card with beer, whisky and hill walking as themes! This is a bit out of my normal range but I had fun with it.





It's a trifold and each panel has a pocket and tag with something appropriate to the question for that panel. The boots are cut on the CraftRobo and I plaited embroidery thread for laces and used mini brads as 'anchor points'. I snuck the whisky reference onto the beer tag (it says A fair few (and maybe the odd wee dram to follow)). I tried to make the tag here look like the clips you get on beer pump handles and T.A. are the recipient's initials. The answer to the candle question is obviously 60!

I showed a card on Just Bex that was made for the decorative edge scissors challenge. The shell on it came about as a result of a forum conversation with Kathy about paperclay. I decided to have a go at making my own push moulds and this is the first experiment! I used a cockle shell and moulded Fimo around it and baked. Then pushed paper mache into the mould (still waiting for my paperclay to arrive!) and rubbed chalks in various shades of brown/grey white over the resulting paper shape. I was quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Paper roses... pa-a-per roses...

Well OK, they're not roses but since the paper blooms competition was launched on Just Bex, I can't get that song out of my head!

I took the instruction to make a bouquet 'ready for summer' rather literally and went for the sunniest flower I could think of!


I made a paper mush for the centres by liquidising torn up scrap paper with a load of water and then draining it and squeezing into a sort of clay consistency. I used a pastry cutter to keep the edges of the circle while I pushed the mush into a firm blob. I rounded the edges off with a wet finger and then left them to dry out (here's where having an Aga helps - nice warm spot to dry your paper mush projects!). I inked with brown and black ink and then painted over with the bronzey colour from the cheapo H2O-alikes from The Works.

The petals are cut on the CraftRobo - it's actually a water droplet from a dingbat font called Mostly Waves. I chalked the tips and stuck two layers round each centre.

The leaves are stamped with a big foam stamp onto glossy green cardstock and then cut round them. Flowers are on bamboo skewer stems and a few narrow strips of green paper got shoved in the vase to make frondy foliage bits. The bud is a spun paper ball with the yellow and green papers scrunched round it.

I'd had this square olive oil bottle for ages because I liked the shape but hadn't found a use for it. A few glass nuggets and a bit of raffia tied round to give it a more rustic look made finishing touches.

I decided I quite liked the way these turned out so I didn't tie a gift label on cos I'm keeping them!

Little green men

Sorry, I seem to have faded from view in Blogland - never could keep a diary! I just made a quick card for this week's Daring Card Makers dare though.



It's Keryn's turn to set the dare and with a little help from her son the theme is 'Celestial' (or 'Space' if you're going for the simplified version!). Chris on the BubblyFunk forum collects together cards for use at a children's hospice. I don't often get to make kids cards so I'd decided to make a few and already had the bits and pieces cut out for this one. The alien is designed in Inkscape and cut with the CraftRobo - inked with two shades of green chalk ink and has wiggly eyes at the top of the eye stalks. I find it difficult to judge kids' cards - hope this is OK!

Dad's birthday

It was my dad's birthday a few days ago. I always find cards for him a bit difficult as he doesn't have any of the typical hobbies to theme stuff around (football, golf etc). He's very practical though so wood and metal make good elements on cards for him and I knew I wanted to use my CraftRobo in making it as Dad gave me the money to buy it (just on a whim - wasn't that lovely of him?).



Woodgrain paper for the background came from The Papermill - I cut 'planks' and inked the edges for some depth. Lettering is cut with the CraftRobo and I've stuck a couple of layers together to give it more body. They're painted with gold acrylic paint and then dabbed over with Caramel Delight and Chestnut Whispers inkpads for a coppery effect. A final touch of Violet and Azure gave more of a weathered look. I love the way copper changes with the effects of heat and age.

The tag is a BossKuts ribbon slide with one end cut off, 'aged' with some inking and a light sprinkle of embossing powder to grunge it up. Stamped/embossed greeting from the Woodware Tiny Phrases set. I raised the D with tiny foam pads and tied the tag around it with jute string.



Dad liked it - that's the main thing!

Food, glorious food

It's Kathy's turn to set the dare over at DCM this week and she's asked for cards featuring food. As it happens I just discovered that a friend had an op yesterday and is expecting to be home tomorrow so I needed a 'hope you soon feel better' kind of card. A bunch of grapes seemed like a classic subject for that!

I found a photo of a grape vine (you wouldn't believe how many of those we have in our collection!) and traced a leaf in RoboMaster then cut out a load of little circles, a frame and a wiggly bit for a tendril. I cut them all from plain card and then dabbed inkpads over them - leaf in two shades of green and grapes in two shades of purple. I used an embossing tool to 'draw' the leaf veins. A few grapes are coated with clear embossing powder and the frame is painted with gold acrylic and has a few random gold sparkle EP highlights.

Didn't think I was going to get time to craft today but if a poorly friend needs a card then you just have a squeeze it in, don't you?

Mum's birthday

It was my mum's birthday yesterday and of course, I just couldn't make a card I liked. I toyed with lots of designs based around the word Mum but nothing came out right. In the end, I settled for something fairly 'vanilla'!



Layers of torn tissue paper with a bit of chalk ink added to the narrowest one for some extra definition, Gillian-inspired machine stitching, a big daisy and a stamped greeting (from the Woodware tiny greetings acrylic stamp set). Mum seemed to like it! (and was especially taken with the stitching - thanks Gillian!).

The daisy is my own design, cut on the CraftRobo. I've curved the petals over a pencil to give them a bit of dimension. If you have a cutter that will cut gsd files, you can grab the template for this one from the Scrapstars site (this thread) if you want it.