Mother's day cards

I have been getting myself organised with Mother's day cards this week and turned to the lovely Graphic 45 Lady's Diary pad for inspiration. These are the two designs I came up with.

This first uses images from the pad, coupled with some blue cotton lace, creamy coloured paper cherry blossom flowers and the sentiment which is from a very useful set of clear stamps recently released by Chocolate Baroque that can be found here. I also used the Memory Box Elegant Scrollwork flourish die.

My second card is deliberately different.

 

I have to say I was inspired by a card I found on Pinterest which used the idea for edging the umberella with lace, so I cannot take the credit for that. I used Lady's Diary papers again, coupled with a ledger paper from Prima to back the lady image. I used the fancy edge strip from the lovely Sue Wilson set I used in my previous post, the same sentiment set and the same die. I added a little black feather to her hat for an extra flourish.

I have also been working on making an ink rack for my Distress Inks this week. I don't have all 48 colours, but decided to make one with 48 slots as no doubt my collection will continue to grow, it is very much a work in progress. I have made three of the four towers so far as you can see here.

 

I have seen a number of these sorts of racks on Pinterest, but I made up my own pattern as I went along. I am using greyboard from the art shop, painting it with black acrylic paint which is a very messy business as you can see from the state of my glass mat in the picture. I decided it wasn't worth cleaning it off until the beastly job was all finished! The idea is that the four towers will be stuck together with one on each side of a rotating unit. I have yet to decide how to decorate the blank edge on each side, but it will all sit on a lazy susan rotating base that I hope to recycle from a charity shop purchase and it will have a little box on the top for holding other Distress products like stains, paints and reinkers as I don't have too many of those. It has been very hard work cutting all the pieces of greyboard, but it is satisfying to see something coming together that in the end will probably cost me only about £7 to make.

It has been lovely to see the sun more in recent weeks. The variety of flowers in the garden is increasing all the time and is enough to bring a smile to the face.

I hope you are enjoying spring wherever you are (assuming you are in the Northern Hemipshere of course!!

Elaine

90th birthday card

It is my dear friend Mary's 90th birthday tomorrow and this is the card I made for her.

I was inspired by the sentiment which is one of the fairly new Chocolate Baroque Mackintosh Sentiments which you can find here. I embossed it onto cream using my Wow Brass EP which gives lovely detail.

The background paper is from the Graphic 45 Lady's Diary collection and I added a die cut bow and border using the lovely Sue Wilson Filigree Bows die sets from Creative Expressions. The main decoration is lots of paper flowers and leaves in different shades of peach, beige and cream.

This is quite a different style from most of the cards I make, but I do enjoy keeping my hand in with this kind of composition from time to time.

We delivered the card this afternoon and she opened it straight away, so I know she was very pleased with it.

Hope you are all enjoying the gorgeous spring sunshine, it is certainly lifting my spirits as is the dawn chorus that greets my waking moments each morning at present. Things really feel like they are coming back to life after a pretty rotten winter.

Lets hope the better weather is here to stay now.

Elaine

Another tiny shop!

Back last year I made this card for my dear crafty friend Jo whose love of minatures is growing day by day.

My starting point was the Graphic 45 Old Curiosity Shop 8 x 8 paper pad. In fact the cover of the pad gave me the floor design. My doors were cut using the Poppy Stamps Grand Madison Window die cut 8 times from textured black card and pieced together with acetate sandwiched between. I added some little charms layered to give me a door handle. I used a concertina strip of card at each side to mount the doors away from the background and to give me space to fit in all my little elements to make it feel like an old junk shop full of curiosities. I used the number and sign from the paper pad and used a Tim Holtz die for the mounts for the sign with some brads for detail. I used all sorts of things inside the shop, some German scrap to give the sense of a shelf, a little plastic skeleton, with paper goggles and highlights of Treasure Gold gilding wax. I added a little Prima clock, a paper scrap angel, a beaded pin and various other paper elements to give the impression of a shop stuffed full with interesting artefacts.

I wanted to add some external elements, to stand on the pavement outside the shop, so I added two sandwich boards made from the G45 pad, added some butterfly embellishments and pen nibs for bodies. The tiny frame was pink plastic, but I coloured it with Treasure Gold and added a vintage train image and the finishing touch was a Wendy Vecchi sewing machine embellishment which needed no additions.

This is actually my second miniature shop card, you can see my first one here, I just love making small things!

Jo was really delighted with her card which I was able to deliver in person when we met in London last summer for a theatre trip on a very hot day, which feels a long way from the weather we are experiencing now!

Elaine