Feed the birds

Thank you everyone for your encouragement and lovely comments about my first blog.  Just hope I can keep it up and not disappoint.

I haven't been able to do as much crafting as I would have liked this week, and a lot of what I've done has to stay under wraps at the minute so as not to spoil the surprise!

One of the reasons I haven't been making is that I treated myself to a lovely night and day in London with my friend  Donna.  In the evening we went to the opening night of Sir Terry Pratchetts play "Nation" and what a fabulous adaptation it was.  The next day we had a girly day in London perusing the shops. First though we paid a quick visit to see St Pauls Cathedral, as we were staying just around the corner. I did manage to resist the urge to sit on the steps and sing "feed the birds".

I'd like to use some of these photos as a scrapbook page, but that will have to wait for the new year.

As I can't share my current projects just yet I thought I would show a couple of cards I made recently for my Neice and Nephews birthday.

I always struggle with cards for boys (and men), but am quite pleased with how this card for my football mad nephew turned out.

Some 3d decoupage (I think his name is Onion) with card candy on the front and pretty green paper from my stash and blue card circles just to add a bit of interest and balance out the "happy birthday" button on the first "inside" (is there a technical term for this format?)

Then just to finish off a little cute Onion sticker inside.

And for my Neice..

the stamped image is "Little Miss Attitude" and when I very first saw it I knew I had to use it for my Neice, Hollie,  its just so her!

This card has two firsts for me, monochrome and copic colouring,  I coloured the image in Lynnes Copic class many months ago and saved it especially for this project.  I am sure I would never have got to grips with Copic markers without Lynnes wonderful class.

She was cut out using a nestability heart die to mimic the hearts on her dress.  I had this card all layed out with some "pretty" black and white paper, then I saw this halloween paper (which is BoBunny, and again sooo Hollie) and just had to use it.  The gothy skulls and girlie flowers shouldn't work together, but do and really sum up my Neices personality.

Sara xx

My First Blog!

Hello and welcome to my first attempt at blogging!

Through my blog I would like to share my papercraft projects, so here goes...

...on Saturday I spent a fantastic day at the lovely Sue's (http://sue-paperparadise.blogspot.com/) along with three other delightful ladies making Christmas cards, which I will now attempt to post photos of.

This was the first card we made, "snow" was stamped onto white card using brown staz on. We then chalked over this to give the background, and highlighted the letters using a watercolour technique and distress inks. This was then matted and layered onto the card and given a final twinkle using stickles.

Again the image was stamped onto white card using staz on (black this time), then more watercolouring with distress inks.  More matting and layering and stickles.  Saturday was the first time that I tried watercolouring, and I'm quite pleased with the results, certainly something I will be trying more of.

The next couple of cards are quite simple, but I think really effective.

Stamped sentiment, die cut and punched snowflakes with adhesive gem highlights, thin ribbon and pretty sparkly snowflake backing paper.

Edges of the stamped sentiment and backing paper distressed with ink.  The flower and ribbon were attached to the backing paper with the pearly brad before the paper was mounted on the card (so that the

legs of the brad are hidden).

The beautiful angel was stamped then coloured using chalks and trimmed to fit the slide mount, which was embossed using the cuttlebug then we rubbed on wax to highlight the design.  Once it was all assembled we added a bit of bling with a gem and the trusty stickles.

Again the stamped image was coloured using chalks, and gel pens were used for the flowers and leaves in the corner.  A very thin strip of black card across the bottom of the image ("faux" ribbon Sue? lol) and the stamped "believe" matted onto black card and mounted on 3d pads.  Two different backing papers were used and the join covered with a strip of the same card used for the card.  The finishing touches were the gorgeous ribbon simply tied around the card, and once again stickles on Santas beard.

I love that those last few cards used backing papers that I wouldn't have thought of for Christmas cards, but with the right embellishments they work so well.

Finally a simple yet classic card

The background is plain white card embossed using the cuttlebug (random snow I think).  The cristmas trees are triangles of core-dinations card, embossed using the cuttlebug then sanded to bring out the inner colour and help make the design stand out, I accidentally de-bossed the larger tree, but ended up liking the result.  The snow is simple made from white paper, crumpled and smoothed out, then torn to shape.

Anyway this has turned into a very long post, I hope you have enjoyed looking at the cards we made on Saturday, I certainly enjoyed making them.  Thanks once again for a fab day Sue x