Crazy Twin Card

My brother Richard (Ricky) and I were both born in September, me at the end of September one year and him at the beginning of September the following year so for 25 days each September we are the same age.  Both in our forties now I still drive my brother mad for most of September by constantly referring to him as my twin brother and he always gets a birthday card from me to start the teasing off.  This year I wanted to use the gorgeous Poppy the Owl die along with the Lorna Label pop up die and the Clock & Gears die set, all designed by the wonderful Karen Burniston for Elizabeth Crafts.  I wanted the front of,the card to be a bit boring so I just used some scraps of Graphic 45 Botanical Tea papers from my scraps bag and typed and printed some text and die cut it into a label for the front.  I added some stars from a banner die I bought recently and left it at that.  The inside I wanted to be vibrant and funny and it had to relate to twins and 25 days.  I hope with the combination of more scraps of Botanical Tea papers and the die cuts I achieved my aim. 

The two text labels go something like this...

Happy Birthday Brother, this year I thought I'd drop the silly "twins for 25 days" routine....

.....but where's the fun in that!!  Happy birthday twin brother, lots of love from your TWIN sister .....blah blah.

 I hope this puts a smile on his face when it pops through his letter box shortly.  Let the teasing commence.

My Little Tree

 

 

 

Over the few months I have been making a few Christmas cards so I don't have the usual last minute rush to make lots which usually results in me cheating and buying a couple of boxes of cards instead.

This stamp is one of my favourite Christmas stamps from Lili of the Valley called My Little Tree.  I have bought a lot of the new Christmas stamps from Lili of the Valley recently and I am in the process of colouring them with my Promarkers but I had this slightly older image already coloured so I thought I would use it on this card. 

 

The base card was cut using the Elizabeth Crafts Evergreen Pivot Card die designed by my favourite American designer Karen Burniston.  This die cuts the three trees that pivot and also comes with some decorator dies that cut the slightly smaller trees and baubles etc. separately.  Here I have covered a piece of white cardstock with a large strip of double sided carpet tape, run the cardstock and dies through my Big Shot then removed the backing paper from the carpet tape and dunked the trees in Crystal Glamour Dust.  I also cut the tree background strips at the bottom using another Elizabeth Crafts die called Outdoor Edges and added Glamour Dust in the same way.  I cut two strips of white cardstock to go inside the card and one for the front and embossed two strips with a snowflake embossing folder and attached one to the left inside edge and one to the front right hand edge and left the right hand inside strip plain so I can write on it.  The tartan background papers are from an 8 x 8 paper pad from Lili of the Valley called Classic Christmas and the funky Christmas phrases on the front and inside are from the Christmas Wishes stamp set also from Lili of the Valley.  That's one down, only another 99 to go.

 

 

 

 

Poppy The Owl

I have fallen in love with the new wafer thin Karen Burniston dies from Elizabeth Crafts.  This card is made with a combination of her dies.  The base I cut using one of her old Sizzix Pop n Cut dies, the pop up part in the middle is her new Lorna Label die which creates a 3D step and a 3D label above it.  Poppy the owl is another of her brand new dies and the glasses are part of another of her new sets, Props 1, which has glasses, a bowler hat, moustache, lips, and dicky bow.  I love that each of the pop it up dies comes with lots of lots of decorator dies.  The Lorna Label has lots of smaller label dies, a banner and a speach bubble.  The Happy Birthday die is by Tonic and I can't remember what make the banner die is.  The papers on the card are leftovers from a Graphic 45, Botanical Tea paper pad.

Lili of the Valley Mad!

I went to the Lili of the Valley's 10th birthday open day last weekend and snapped up the ten new fairy stamps and I love every one of them.  I think this one, called Water Lily is my favourite.  I made this card for one of my friends using some small pieces of leftover card and paper and to get as much out of the small piece of pink cardstock I cut the large circular piece out of the square piece at the back and the circle and flowers also out of the square piece at the back and the hidden part of the large circle piece behind the coloured image. It was a bit touch and go and I thought I wouldn't have quite enough but it just worked out.

The card below is a slightly older Lili of the Valley stamp called Vegetable Patch and it's very apt for another friend who, along with his wife and son, loves growing veg.  I cut the image on a little slope to make it look like he was working a little bit harder.  The papers I used are again just scrappy bits left over from other projects.  The On Your Birthday image on both cards is from set 7 Sentiments, also from Lili of the Valley and I coloured the main images with Pro-markers and Prismacolour pencils.

Had a bit of a tidy up of my Lili of the Valley stamps this week and found I have 253 of their individual stamps plus lots of their clear background and sentiment sets, tickets, Chinese ladies etc, eek, how did that happen?

Big Heart for Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day shortly and this year my Mother is away abroad with my Dad, enjoying the sunshine so I made her card in December so she could take it with her when they flew out in January.  The card above I made for my lovely Mother In Law.  She loves my hand made cards and keeps them all in a big box.  She went mad the year I presented her with a gorgeous and very expensive shop bought one, I had to go home and make her another one so that year she had two.  I have used my favourite ever Lili of the Valley Stamp called James - Big Heart.  I keep using this stamp over and over, James is so cute.  Here I have coloured him with Pro-markers, added some liquid pearl dots to the heart and added the image to a die cut frame, I think it's a Sizzix one.  I have layered up some patterned papers from my scraps bag with some red cardstock, added some red ribbon tied with a bow then die cut some flowers and leaves, curling up the edges before inking around the edges and then I have added a half pearl to the centre of each flower.  I finished it off with a little sentiment and a couple of smaller pearls.

The inspiration for this card came from the monthly challenge over on the Lili of the Valley blog.  This month it is a crafty bingo challenge, with a 3 x 3 square grid, each grid containing the name of a type of embellishment and you have to create a card using a line from the grid, I chose the top line which was ribbon, pearls and flowers.

Have I Told You Lately (That I Love You?)

I can't get enough of James the bear by Lili of The Valley, especially this Big Heart stamp.  Lili of the Valley's monthly challenge for February is Name That Tune!  Create a project that fits with a song, old or new and as it was Valentine's Day I thought I would make my teddy bear collecting hubby this card which I thought went perfectly with the song title "Have I Told You Lately (That I Love You?) by Rod Stewart.   I coloured the image using Pro-markers and added some Liquid Pearl dots and I cut the card blank with a thin metal die.  The patterned paper is from my scraps bag as is the coloured cardstock.  The sentiment on the front is from Lili of the Valley's clear stamp set 18, Greetings - Postmarks and the verse inside is from set 65, Quotables - Love.  I had to mask off a tiny bit of the verse stamp so it fit perfectly inside the die cut circle but I don't think anyone will notice if I don't say anything...doh!  Hubby loved the card and I loved making it.

21st Birthday Card

I made this card for my daughter's 21st birthday next month. I used one of the Prima Doll Stamps and layered up the skirt on the dress, adding some antique lace to the underside of the top layer of the skirt.  The cardstock with the text on is packaging from some Prima flowers.  The papers underneath are also Prima but from a paper pad and the flower is also Prima.  The "daughter" stamp is from Lili of The Valley and the hearts are punched with various punches and dies.  I inked all the edges with Brushed Corduroy distress ink and coloured the dolls hair with Pro-Markers.

Owl Slippers

This layout is for my Journal Your Christmas/December Daily project.  I decided that for Christmas Day and Boxing Day I would do full size layouts instead of the 4" x 6" mini layouts I have been doing for the rest of December.  This one is about the lovely owl slippers my husband bought me for Christmas.  I used to be a Brownie Guide leader so I have had a variety of owl names and I love cute owls so these owl slippers were perfect. 

As always, I started off with white paper (it is honest), this was in the fabulous Christmas kit I bought from Shimelle Laine and she had written festive phrases on it in red and green which I love.  The tags and owl wrapping were from various gifts I received at Christmas and I made the little Joy badge using my fabby little badge maker.  The other patterned papers are from the Shimelle kit.

A Journey Concertina Tag Album

I started 2014 as I mean to go on, I woke up, sat up, grabbed a bag of stash from the side of the bed and made this little concertina tag mini album before I ventured out from under my lovely warm duvet.

A couple of days ago I was telling my friend Kathy that I have dozens and dozens of unstarted and unfinished class kits from retreats as long ago as Scrapaganza in 2006 up to the present day.  She challenged me to go grab one and do something with it.  So off I went and the first kit I found was an old Rusty Pickle travel album kit that must be at least five years old, if not older.  The papers were not really to my taste so I grabbed another part kit which contained some left over Glitz papers from a class at Scrapstars a few years ago, taught by the wonderful Rachael Elliott.  I constructed the chipboard album and inner envelope concertina from the Rusty Pickle kit and covered it with the Glitz papers and embellishments.  I am going to use it to record my weight loss journey in 2013 and 2014 with a photo each month on a tag with some journaling about how I feel.  Since mid August I have lost 2 stone so I already have a few photos to put in and I look forward to completing the album and my weight loss journey soon.