Cardmaking-Companion-Blog

For those of you who are new to this blog , you may not realise that every month Cardmaking-Companion issues a FREE monthly newsletter called, “News and Views”. With the newsletter comes 7 FREE digital background papers.

It’s very easy to sign up for the newsletter – simply scroll down the right hand margin of this blog and you’ll see the sign up box, or alternatively sign up directly from the main website.

Each month I show a card I have made with one of the free papers, and I thought this month I would share this with you on the blog.

I love this striking grey, pink and black floral paper. It’s quite a busy design but lends itself well to either a plain card or a more elaborate design.

This 6″ x 6″ card blank has been covered with the paper. I have some pre-cut cream hammer finish circles and one of these has formed the centre piece of the card. Onto this I have mounted a scalloped edge circle, cut with a Nestability, from one of Cardmaking-Ideas’ dotty papers.

I made a small bouquet of 3 rose floral embellishments and hand tied them with a pink ribbon, fixing them to the card with some PVA glue.

Around the edge of the circle I punched some butterflies, alternating a plain pink one with a “dotty” one. Small pink pearl embellishments were added to the body of each butterfly.

I decided to leave the card sentiment free but a peel off sticker would have worked in the bottom right hand corner.

Inside the card I used a pink insert and, as usual,  punched a design into the bottom right hand corner.

I have already sent this card to a dear lady called Emma, who is 80 years old, and has just undergone a 7 hour back operation. Thankfully the operation has been a success and Emma is expected to make a full recovery.

Way back in January I wrote about an Unusual Wedding Invitation which I had made for Stewie to give to his bride to be, Lisa. Well the Wedding Day finally came last Sunday and we had a lovely day at their wedding.

However, as usual, my life has been really hectic so I had absolutely no time left to make them a Wedding Card myself. I frantically searched through all the card boxes of the cards we sell at Church. Luckily Anita had recently made this delightful card so I dutifully purchased it, but before writing it, decided it was so nice I had to share it with you.

The card is a landscape with scalloped edges. I hope you can just make out the pale white and grey backing paper which Anita has used as a base mat. Onto this she has rubber stamped a delightful wedding image from Lili of the Valley which she had bought from one of the craft shows we have been to, and a simple sentiment.

The stamped image has been mounted onto silver Mirri card and the finishing touch is a white chiffon ribbon.

I love the way Anita has been quite sparing with her use of colour on this card – the image could have been more heavily coloured but I think this would have distracted from the overall feel of the card.

A little glitter just gives the card the right amount of highlights.

There are so many lovely wedding stamps on the market at the moment that you can be spoilt for choice.  However here are just a few which you may like and they are available for sale:

And just in case you’re wondering what the happy couple looked like – here is their photo – taken just after they’d exited the Church through a whirl of confetti!

Carrying on from my last post, here are a couple of quick and easy friendship cards, made using Card Toppers.

This background paper is part of a stack I’ve had for ages and when I spotted this pretty floral topper it seemed as if they were meant to go together!

I simply mounted the topper and the sentiment (which came from the same sheet) onto silver Mirri card.

To add a bit of interest to the design I  punched the lower edge of the bacground paper with the Martha Stewart double loops punch.

The background card is a standard 6″ x 6″ white card blank.

This took me so little time to make yet it will let someone know how much I care for them.

Using the same background paper and another topper and sentiment from the same sheet I made this other quick card.

Both ideas are simple enough for you to copy using what you already have in your own stash of papers and toppers.

The idea is not to produce an elaborate card but to let someone know how much they mean to you.

Technorati Tags: card toppers

It’s a sad fact that often our lives are so busy that we take our friendships for granted.

That is why I want to share this card with you. It was made by a lady called Linda (not the same Linda I have previously written about) who has recently joined our card making team and she is making some really lovely cards for us to sell at Church. This one particularly caught my eye because it is so bright and jolly and just immediately makes you want to smile.

I think it is a great card to send to a friend to just to let them know that you do not take them for granted and that you do value their friendship.

I like the way Linda has combined her use of rubber stamping with the torn hand made paper and the printed background paper.

It was really refreshing for me when Linda showed me some of her cards and asked to join our team because her style is very different to mine and she has jolted me into thinking how I can freshen up some of my card making.

So my suggestion to you all is to make some Friendship Cards and let your friends know how much you value them.

And if you don’t already have any friendship stamps in your collection here is a selection available for you to purchase. Simply click on the image to select the stamp of your choice:

At Church recently we had a Celebration Evening to celebrate what has been achieved in the last 6 months and to look forward to the next 6. As part of the evening our choir performed  a special song and I’m going to share it with you here because I think it fits in with this piece on friendship – I know many of my friends have been there for me in tough times ( you know who you are ladies!) and I was grateful for their support.

I hope you enjoy the video – all the singers are amateurs and rehearse together for just a couple of hours a week. I thnk they did a great job on a great song!

Wow, I can’t believe the last time I posted here was 3 weeks ago! In case you’re wondering what’s happened – I’ve been away on business. Part of the time I had to stay in a 4* Spa Hotel, the Grosvenor Pulford, just outside of Chester. It’s a hard life but someone’s got to do it!

Anyway the upshot of it all is that I haven’t had much time to blog or make cards. By the time I’ve got in at night I’ve been exhausted. So to get back into the routine again I thought I’d share another of Linda’s cards with you.

This handmade card has been made using the same rubber stamped image as in the previous card.

It really is a beautiful card without being over fussy or complicated. I particularly like the way Linda has used the Martha Stewart punch to create the ribbon border.

Hopefully I’ll be getting my own card making back into full swing, especially as I’ve pledged to make 10 cards for a Promise Auction which is being held in July to help raise funds for our team’s next mission trip to Uganda. These will not be “£1 specials” but more elaborate so I’ll have to get those creative juices flowing again!

Technorati Tags: card making, rubber stamped

I just want to share with you this card I made for my friend Margaret who was 60 yesterday.

Margaret is a very special lady so I wanted to make her a very special card. What makes her so special is that she has recently donated one of her kidneys to another member of our Church who was in desperate need of a kidney transplant.

Margaret is not related to the other person but felt directed by God to put herself forward for kidney matching. Now if you are not religious you might say that this is a load of rubbish – I’m not here to argue the semantics or rights of this I’m just reporting to you what Margaret felt she had to do.

None of the recipient’s family were a match but Margaret was so the operation went swiftly ahead.

Margaret has saved the recipient’s life because she was failing to respond to dialysis.

What a selfless act – at 59 years of age Margaret knew the risks and was prepared to take them.

Could I be so selfless? The honest answer is I’m not sure – I would like to think I could be but until faced with the situation I do not know how I would react.

As you can see on the card I have made a little bouquet from the floral embellishments which I got at Port Sunlight and I’ve used lots of pink gemstones to add life to the brown and pink cardstock I’ve used for the Toppers.

The backing paper is a spare sheet I’ve had in my “stash” and I thought the brown and pink made a nice choice rather than standard floral, silver or gold based papers.

The words and numbers are cut from the Cricut George cartridge. The base card is cream and I added a punched pink insert.

Anyway I hope you like it and after telling her story you can see why I think Margaret is so special!

Saturday was Fete Day in Longton and along with Anita and Hilary I packed up all the cards we had and off we went to raise funds for our mission work in Uganda.

The weather was glorious, apparently the temperature reached 86 ‘ F (30′C). Luckily we had a gazebo which we set up to protect the cards – and ourselves!

In this photo Anita is on the left and Hilary on the right ( sorry it’s a little dark but the camera was compensating for the bright sunlight).

Unfortunately the Fete has not been well marketed for the past couple of years and this year it was hardly publicised at all. We were told  to be on the Memorial Field where it was held at 9.30am with the gates opening at 11.30am, however the start date has

previously been 2pm and that is when most of the people arrived!  It was actually very poorly attended which was disappointing and we only sold about 30 cards, whereas other years we’ve more or less sold out. Other stall holders we talked to hadn’t done any better.

Despite the poor results we enjoyed ourselves – we all lead very busy lives so it was good to have the luxury of just sitting and talking for a few hours.

By the time I got home I was exhausted – relaxing is so tiring!

Anyway here are just a couple of photos of 2 of our stands -see what you can spot.

Technorati Tags: card making

I’ve spoken before about my friend Linda who makes the most beautiful cards, well I thought it was about time that I showed you some of her work.

This is a large card, 8″ x 8″ , which is one of Linda’s favourite card sizes. The card front has been covered with a plain pink and then a floral background paper, leaving just a border of white card showing.

Two strands of  deep pink organza ribbon have been wrapped around the matts and tied with a centre bow.  Two rose embellishments have been attached to the bow.

The rubber stamped Sugar Nellie image has been beautifully coloured with Copic Markers on a matt cut from a circle Nestability.

This has been mounted onto a floral matt on which Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page Combo Double Loops set has been used.

The floral matt has then been layered onto a pink matt where just the corners have been puched.

Finishing touch is a  pre-printed sentiment has been matt and layered onto a pink scalloped edge Nestability. Linda let me into a little secret about the positioning of the sentiment – it covers where she made a mistake with the ink, but you’d never know!

There is nothing difficult about this card – Linda just has a lovely eye for composition and has the knack of knowing just what works well.

Becuase it is known that I make cards for charity I am lucky enough to sometimes be given card making supplies from different people. Recently I was given a few boxes from an elderly lady who used to own a craft shop.

It was quite exciting rooting through everything – some of the stuff was very old and had discoloured but I found a few sheets of these cute toppers.

The paper they have been printed on is quite flimsy so I mounted them on silver Mirri card, and because the images, although cute, looked a bit flat I aded a sprinkling of glitter. In the photogragh the glitter looks a bit clumpy but on the actual card it adds a delicate highlight.

The landscape card blank has been covered with the blue multi dot paper from cardmaking-Ideas, which picks up the blue from the Topper.

I’ve used a corner punch on the bottom 2 corners to add interest to the card and added  tiny blue gemstones as an embellishment below the punches.

The sentiment is a peel off sticker mounted onto pale blue card, matt and layered onto the Mirri card.

The cream fabric flower tucked behind the Topper adds a finishing touch to the front of the card. This is one of a lot of fabric flowers which I bought at the Port Sunlight Show.  They come in bunches of about 9 flower heads on wire stems and I really like them. The down side is that they do make the card bulky so ideally you need to make a box, rather than an envelope to put the card in.

Finishing touch is the card insert which is in cream to co ordinate with the flower embellishment.

This ballerina topper was also part of my find. It is so sweet that it makes a great card for a young girl.  Again I have mounted it onto silver Mirri card and I’ve highlighted the flowers with a pinch of glitter. The card is covered with Dusky Pink Swirls, from Cardmaking-Ideas, which I think suits the Topper perfectly.

The sentiment has been matt and layered onto the Mirri card and the finishing touch is a dusky pink organza ribbon. Inside the card is a pink insert.

The card on the right has been made using the same Topper and paper but I’ve just altered the layout slightly by only partcovering the white card blank.  A silver peel off edges the paper.

These Ballerina cards were made prior to me going to the Port Sunlight show. Had I been making them now I would also have added some of the flower embellishments which I bought.