Baby Bee cards

I have made a few bee-themed cards for my colleague to give to her daughter over the last couple of years ..... now it's time for the New Baby card! 
First I made a generic mint coloured card, which she liked, but decided that she wanted to wait until she knew whether a pink or a blue card would be needed.  So I have made one of each and they are ready and waiting......
This is the mint colourway, it does look more aqua in the photo, but it is mint really LOL:

Here are the pink and blue.  I changed the design slightly and put the colour into the base mat and oval mat, instead of the background as previously.

Both the bee stamp and the sentiment are from Stampin' Up, though I did remove the 'baby bumblebee' wording, which I'm not keen on.  I used the word window punch for the sentiment. The backgrounds are embossed with a honeycomb folder and the scalloped lace mat is done with a Dienamics die.
Really pleased with these, the oval on the embossed background could be used for all sorts of other cards too.

Pin-spiration - mosaic madness cards

I decided that I really should start creating from my Pinterest board, rather than just adding to it ..... :-)  So last craft weekend, I asked Sy to pick three items from my card-making inspiration board for me to try out to see what I could come up with.

She chose these two Pins here and here based on the Stampin' Up Mosaic Madness set, sadly the stamps themselves are now discontinued but the punch and embossing folder are still available.  She did choose a third, but I didn't get around to that one LOL.

I stamped a selection of the designs, punched them out and placed on mats embossed with the Mosaic embossing folder.  The small green motif was stamped directly onto the mat and is not completely accurate as the image is not in the centre of the rubber, so I had to guess!  Next time I will stamp and use a small circle punch, then attach them.  I used the SU word window punch for the peel-off sentiment on the left hand card and the circle-punched sentiment on the right is from Lili of the Valley.  I invert-rounded the corners on one card, just for a bit of extra detail. 
They were quite fiddly to do, but the results are not too shabby!

Father's Day card

I have been playing around with embossing and inking ...... first I ran some plain cardstock through the Bigshot in an embossing folder, then I inked it in various shades of distress ink. The results are fab and I will be sharing some of them over the next few posts.  This is the Father's Day card I made.

I embossed the cardstock with a 'clocks' folder - can't remember the brand - then inked it with a mixture of browns and green. Then I cut it into four panels and positioned on a mat, added a ribbon and stuck the whole assemblage to a kraft card blank.
The sentiment is from Lili of the Valley, stamped, embossed in gold, punched out and matted.  I lightly inked over that too.
I really like this technique and it lends itself so well to making 'panelled' backgrounds - there will definitely be more of these in the future!

Sheltering Tree birthday cards

I bought this Stampin' Up stamp set a few weeks ago and these cards are my first 'play' with it.

I prefer the lighter brown for the main body of the tree, I think.  The scalloped mats are made using Tonic Studio dies and the holey-edged mat (can't think of it's proper name!) is from Little B.  The sentiment stamp is from Stamping All Day.
There are some lovely examples of this stamp set online, done in autumn shades, I think I'll be trying those next :-)

Beat the Christmas Rush - May

BtCR is now hosted by Krafty Karen, you can find the details here.  Thank you to Sue for inventing and hosting the challenge so brilliantly.

I have made four identical simple cards this month, completely non-dimensional so they can be easily posted!  I still don't have the space to set up my photo booth, so for the time being all my cards are artfully posed on my mini guillotine :-)

The paper is from Simple Stories and the stamp is from Just-rite.  The image is stamped and embossed using Stampendous Pearl Champagne embossing powder, it's a lovely soft gold.  I die-cut the image using a Nestie label, I think it was label 22.

I hope you'll join us for this challenge, hop over to Karen to find out more :-)

Retirement card and gift box

I can't believe it has been so long since I posted - various real life issues have taken over, well, real life!  But I am back in the land of the blogging once more, though still can't set my photo booth up to take decent pictures .....

My colleague recently retired, so I had to make an A4 card to send around the office for everyone to sign.  At least that was the plan - because the card has a lumpy front I made an insert for signing, and the girl taking it around didn't want to risk getting the card damaged so just took the insert around - hardly anyone saw the actual card, they just put all their good wishes on a blank piece of paper LOL.

It had to be pink and purple, with flowers, butterflies and bling. I think I managed that.....

 

I also decorated a box for the card and the gift vouchers we had bought with the collection money.

And ..... it was also her 65th birthday, so I made her a pink birthday card :-)

She was overwhelmed :-)