Card Making Evening

A couple of weekends ago a good friend of mine hosted a card making evening at her house. Out of the 5 of us attending 4 worked in libraries, so I just couldn't resist designing a card using my "Book plate" (Ex-Libris) stamp!

I was a bit worried that the stamp might have been too big to get 2 good prints out of it, but everyone successfully got 2 to use, so could make 2 cards out of it! The sentiments used are from the Curly Cute stamp set- these ones give a nice elegant touch I think...

The hostess wanted me to design a card that could be used for a wedding; so I came up with this next one, based on a design originally created by Nicky Whittall (a fellow pink lady!)

The sentiment again can be changed for a variety of occasions, not just a wedding. In fact a few of the ladies decided to play around with the elements on the card too, which was great; so we had some with the flower in the middle or at an angle and some with no sentiment at all.

It was lovely to introduce some total newbies to card-making; I look forward to doing it again soon!

Birthday Book

Finally finished this Birthday book that I started at  Michelle Last's Bicester Craft Day (back in October) for my mum's birthday last week (her fav colour is purple).

I filled it chock full of handmade cards (there's space for 12, but I doubled up on some of the pages)  and she really loved it :)

Book plate stamp and one of the cards in the book

I even got a chance to try out my first giant stamp- the "book plate" in elegant eggplant ink. It's big enough to be a card on its own, after one print (and a little embellishment) but I just used it as a book plate for the inside cover this time.

Here's a couple more cards I put inside:

<<  Open Sea 

(also made at the Craft Day)

Thank You Owly >>

(well you don't just need birthday cards :p)

Thank you owly

Since getting the owl punch about a year ago-i finally got round to making a "bookish" card with it!

In my other life I am a Library Assistant, so when our work experience boy left last week I made him a little card. The book ends/sides were made with the word window punch.

Baby Pink

I really enjoyed making this one-it took me all evening and i kept bringing out box after box of my craft stuff to try and find things to work with. I must take a pic of the state/mess I get into just making a single card!

Anyway this one I based on Mojo Monday Sketch #185







And the colours-well, HSS #62: Pink-a-licious had just the right scheme to work with!

And then to top it off i'll enter it into  SUO Challenge 16: Animal cards as i have an elephant and duckies!)

CR84FN 20 (Plum, Lavender & Green)

CR84FN 20 has my favourite card colours for their challenge this week, so I got to make another card with my favourite birdy! 

I confess I cased this one from  Julie's stamp Journal where she made a beautiful orange version.

Sorry the photo is a bit dull-poor lighting i'm afraid :(

Bright Birthday

I had fun working with the Colour Q challenge #72 colours this week. I wanted to carry on using my new scallop and circle punches so that's what I did. I actually made about 16 of these little motifs all in different combinations of the 4 colours- so will probably be creating with these for some time! I am quite proud of the stamped sentiment at the bottom- a bit of a delicate task colouring in each of the letters separately but a great result i think :)

SU! Stamping wheels

I thought i'd have a play with my SU stamping wheel "trendy trees"  again after spotting the latest challenge on SUO. I'm one of these people who like to mix and match my craft products so to keep totally to SU ones was a little tricky for me- but kept me more focussed. I used my new Scallop punch and 1"1/4 inch punch (which nicely sits inside the scallop) and then the sentiment is from the "curly cute" stamp set. I can't remember the names of the colours (sorry!)-but i will go away and find out!

Bird Punch goodness!

I learnt a new word (well, actually I'd heard it before but found out what it meant in the scrapbooking/cardmaking community) this week: CASE! Meaning "Copy And Share Everything" - but in reality it means you totally nicked someone's idea! However, as long as you say you "cased" something, at least you are not taking the credit for the idea :)

Anyway, with that precursor in place I can move on without guilt to my recent creations that are pretty much cased from a beautiful collection of work by Nancy Riley!

There's still space to work on this one, but I thought i'd show it anyway:)

As you can see I now have the 2-step bird punch in my possession! A Christmas gift from Hubby- which I have been itching to get for a while and have been drooling over some of the creations people have made with it.

And so onto my next creation...

My entry for: PPA-76 and MOJO 172

I've found another Blog challenge site! Mojo Monday. Its a Sketch challenge blog; this week's being MOJO 172

Being the first of the month, there's a bit more of an incentive-with stamp prizes up for grabs. And hense over 350 entries! And if that were not all, I've done a double whammy by combining it with Paper Pals Art-Colour Challenge -76 

Oh gosh-have I bitten off too much?!

Wedding time!

We're off to a wedding tomorrow, so I spent last night creating a card. I took the main structure from my last engagement card post, but did a fair bit of gold embossing this time. I used the 5 petal flower punch and the flower stamp from SU polka dot punches. Finally got to use a stamp from my new stamp set: Curly cute.
I had a little bride and groom stamp from my own wedding-so added this motif too. Without it it could have been an engagement or even baby card! Will have to work on that one.