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