My Son in law celebrated his birthday recently and has been working hard on home renovations so I used that as the theme for his card. I used quite an assortment of dies to create this. For further details just click on any of the images. The light bulbs were stamped onto shrink plastic. He’s been doing all kinds of things from plumbing, woodwork, painting and demolition so I tried to reflect all of these in his card. Because of the pop up middle I had to put the verse on the back of the card.

I love Heartfelt creations flowers dies and recently have also acquired a few of their 3D Flower Shaping Molds too. They make the most beautiful realistic looking flowers and the shaping molds take a lot of hard work out of creating them. I recently bought the Blazing Poppies stamps set and matching dies and so they were the obvious choice to make a special card for my youngest sister’s November Birthday. I started by making a whole bunch of poppies using the stamps and dies. I created a topper using the poppies and decided to make a pop out gatefold card so that the topper would be a surprise found on opening the card rather than it being on the front. This style of card also makes for a fabulous display on the mantlepiece. I used a couple of additional spellbinders dies to create the poppy centres and the leaves and for the belly band I used Altenew layered stamps and dies from the  ALTENEW Modern Blooms Magazine kit Issue 1 to create single layer poppies.  I used Bright Rosa dies for the sentiments. I found some perfect patterned papers in my stash but was looking for something else to go inside. I ended up creating my own poppy backing paper using  the stencil from the Altenew cover gift of Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine Issue 194 . I used distress ink through the stencil and then added detail with a black fine liner pen. The final finishing touch was the addition of some Nuvo Glitter drops in Midnight Sky and Glossy accents to the centres of the poppies. I loved how it turned out and am glad to say my sister loved it too.

Butterflies have to be one of my all time favourite things to craft with. I have a vast collection of different dies and stamps from all kinds of different brands. I was delighted to get the Hunkydory All of a Flutter matching stamps and dies at a bargain price on ebay. They offer a wide scope of design possibilities but,  for this first time out of the packaging, I’ve kept things simple using them as originally intended to create custom shaped apertures which fit around the stamped images. I’ve not finished these cards as they are in my stash awaiting an occasion to use them. I intend to add coloured which will show through the aperture and add appropriate sentiments when needed. I thought I posts pics anyway to see what you think. I had lots of fun getting messy with these. I started by stamping the image in Versafine Onyx Black ink and heat embossing with clear powder. I then painted over the images with masking fluid before colouring the whole card with ink blending. I decided to add some pearlescent ink spritzed and splattered to add extra interest. Once dry, I die cut the apertures and removed the masking fluid and then coloured in the stamped images with marker pens. These examples are all very vibrant but am sure they will look beautiful done in pastel shades too. There is lots of scope for snipping into and layering up of these beautiful butterflies so will be adding this to my ‘to do’ list.

I don’t know about you, but I just love Altenew layering stamps and dies. I was thrilled when they brought out their first edition of a Magazine boxed kit and bought it straight away. I was busy at the time and so didn’t get around to playing with the contents for a while and it’s taken even longer to post my initial makes on here, but here they are. I actually made one more in shades of blue but sent that one to a crafty friend who’d been poorly and needed a lift so didn’t get chance to photograph it. Normally you need inks in varying shades of the same colour for the layering stamps but not in this case. A while ago I invested in a few sets of Generation Inx ink pads by Stamps By Me Ltd. They are great as you can ink up the stamp just once and stamp multiple times, each time the shade gets lighter. I kind of wasted some ink making these cards as you need to start off with the lightest colour, but I quickly realised I could stamp off the excess ink randomly onto plain white and use that to create backgrounds in future cards (watch this space). The Generation inks meant that my varying shades matched perfectly for each colour I used. For these cards I created a band of colour by masking off with post it notes and using an ink blending tool with my chosen colour. Once stamped, I die cut the flowers with the coordinating die and the added some stickles glitter glue to the centre of the flowers. The resulting cards are post friendly as they can go via standard delivery.  I’ve left them without any greeting as they will be useful to keep in my stash and then add an appropriate sentiment as the need arises. The design of these stamps is so clever as, depending on the colour used, they can be made to look like a variety of different flowers. In my next post you’ll see how I used the same stamps to create some fab poppies for my sister’s November birthday.

MY friend’s daughter recently celebrated her 40th Birthday. Because of COVD restrictions she was unable to have the big party that had been planned. My friend asked me to make a special card for her which incorporated some favourite pictures from the past. I used Craft Artist 2 Professional software to frame the photographs she sent me so that they would look coordinated when included in the card. This is a big card measuring 20cm tall by over 80 cm wide when opened out fully, definitely takes centre stage on the mantlepiece. I used some beautiful layered Spellbinders Glimmer foiling dies for the flowers on the front of this card. For details of other dies used just click on any of the pictures below.

My daughter’s partner celebrated his 30th Birthday in late September and unfortunately, because of COVID restrictions was unable to have a party to celebrate as he’d hoped. I Made him a special card to send our Birthday greetings which included all of his favourite things including his favourite football team Manchester City. For details of dies and resource used to make this just click on any of the pictures below.

With all the Covid restrictions we’ve been under for months now, I’ve had a bit of time on my hands which I’ve put to good use. We send over 100 Christmas cards each year and I’ve made them all myself for the last few years. It’s a daunting task but much easier if they are batch made. I bought some snowflake tree decorations in the January sales with a view to using them on Christmas cards. All I had to do was come up with a design that would be easy to mass produce. I decided that the pop out gate fold card would be perfect for the snowflakes.  My design was also great for busting my mahoosive stash of patterned papers from paper packs, magazines and craft kits. I bought a great stamp by Woodware which I used to make a batch of paper-pieced cards and now have around 110 cards. Can’t believe they are all done, and it’s not even November. I’m usually panicking like a headless chicken. This year the cards are going to be more important than ever as it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to meet up with many of the people we will be sending these to. For details of materials used just click on the relevant picture.

Regular visitors will have seen this type of keepsake a number of times before. It’s by far my most popular card for new babies and I never tire of making them. I don’t always have photographs to put inside but when I do get them it makes it all the nicer as I get to see the finished article. I even used one of the pictures on the front cover for this one. The little girl in question is my daughter’s first Niece.