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.

It’s not often you get asked to make three cards the same. In this case, my friend had some very special triplets that she wanted to send First Birthday Wishes to. You’ll see that fundamentally, the cards are all the same apart from one or two subtle differences the most obvious being the one for Arthur. I used unbranded dies for most of the elements on these cards. The Balloon alphabet dies were from The Works wit embroidery thread used for the balloon strings. The large numbers were cut using the Sizzix Bigz Sassy Serif Number dies.

Are any of you crafters out there like me? I buy craft magazines all the time, especially when I like the free gift. I have many of these free gifts that I’ve never used. They are all filed neatly in my stash. I bought the Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine Issue 208 a couple of weeks ago, I was drawn by the fab set of Autumn Days stamps that came free with it. This time I decided to have a play and see what I could do with them. I just love the tree stamps best of all but there are so many other lovely stamps in the set. If you look closely at the 4 leafy cards, you’ll see I used them in the background as well as for the focal arrangements. I stamped in clear versamark ink then heat embossed ising gold embossing powder. I got inky fingers blending in the autumnal colours for the backgrounds. I stamped lots of leaves and used watercolour markers to colour them in. Some of them were crying out for accenting with Glossy accents, it brought them to life and made the colours pop. I fussy cut the images then made various arrangements with them, finishing off with some die cut leaves, berries and sentiments. For the other cards I used the tree stamps to recreate a card I’ve made before with a similar stamp but this time the stamps were bigger and much better. I used post it notes and a home made acetate stencil to ink in the sky and ground before stamping the trees in black. I made them in pairs using alternative colours then die cut the Sun/moon from both at the same time and then swapped them over. I was originally intending just to make the sympathy cards but then thought of changing up the colours and adding some glitter and sparkle to make Christmas cards. I had very inky fingers but really enjoyed experimenting and have resolved to work my way through my other sets to see what I come up with. For full sized images and more details, just click on the pictures.

My friend’s Grandson was celebrating his 16th birthday and I had a request to make 2 Basketball themed cards, one from my friend and one from her daughter (his mum). I used the colours of his favourite team as the basis for both cards and although they are very similar, I used different dies for each of the cards and different style too. Foe details of the dies used for each card just click on any of the pictures and you’ll get the full sized view with all the information.

I’ve had a couple of friends celebrating Ruby wedding anniversaries this summer. Buying gifts under lockdown isn’t easy especially for the kind of people who already have everything, so I decided to make them a keepsake picture and co-ordinating cards. I even managed to stamp some bespoke wrapping paper too.

I have tended not to go for subscriptions to craft magazines and products. I did have a subscription to Simply Cards & Papercraft for a few years and enjoyed them arriving every month. I found, however, that the gifts/contents were not always to my taste and often got put away safely never to see the light of day. When Craftstash launched their new Papercraft Society Subscription Box I hesitated. The value of the contents is exceptional but I wasn’t sure I would like the themes/designs each month and so didn’t subscribe. Last month Craftstash offered 2 of their Papercraft Society Box back issues on a special trial offer. One the boxes was right up my street so I dived in and bought it. It was the June issue by Designer Olga Direktorenko and was music themed. Opening the box was like having Christmas come early it was packed with lots of amazing stamps, dies card stock and specialist papers (2 of each). In addition there were 3 mini hybrid ink pads in gorgeous colours, a pot of fine gold embossing powder, a pack of treble clef table confetti and an amazing double design embossing folder.

The pack came with a comprehensive guide full of amazing designs to get you off to a great start and tons of ‘how to’ tips and hints. I have had the best time ever playing with this kit. I started by copying some of the designs in the guide adding some little touches of my own here and there.  Everything is so brilliantly co-ordinated to work seamlessly together and help you get the most professional look to the finished cards. I went off at a tangent after the first few cards and came up with a few designs of my own. Below you’ll find pictures of all the cards I managed to create during my play session with the kit. To view details of extras I used that weren’t included in the kit just click on the individual images.