Papertrey Ink birthday card

Hello everyone, and welcome to Sandee, Ellen and Sara who are new followers this week. I have a spate of birthdays coming up and I made this one for my friend Angie

I took a square of white card and die cut the three butterflies from it before layering it onto some Hawaiian Shores card. I then stamped three different butterflies through the apertures in Fresh Snow ink.

I added a strip of dotty ribbon and tied a bow with an added button

before stamping the sentiment and adding some gems for the butterfly bodies to finish it off. This panel was added to the base card with some foam dots to give a little extra dimension.

We have been having glorious spring weather in Manchester, so the garden furniture has been pulled out and washed in the hope that the sunshine will last. The magnolia tree opposite our house has been particularly magnificent this year

and the spring bulbs have really responded to the sunshine

I hope you are all having a good week and thanks for looking in.

Hugs

Carol x

Papertrey Ink Blog Hop

Hello everyone,

Yay, its the first day of British Summer Time and we start to have light evenings again! I hope you are enjoying the glorious spring weather. Our eldest son is running in one of the Sports Relief runs today so we are off to cheer him on but before we go its time for the PTI March Blog Hop


and this time the inspiration picture invited us to use yellow and aqua colours in a project.



I love this colour combination which evokes thoughts of spring and new life to me, so I decided to make a new baby card with the Bundle of Love stamp set and the Framed Out 1 stamps and die

click to enlarge

I also wanted to make some egg shaped tags for Easter and cut some egg shapes on my Silhouette Cameo before stamping them with a variety of tiny PTI stamps in yellow and aqua mist. I glued each pair back to back with some yellow gingham ribbon sandwiched between them at the top:-

These tags will hang on a little Easter tree along with some decorations and will be attached to any little chocolate treats that will be given over the Easter Holiday

Thanks for looking in and enjoy all the wonderful inspiration on the hop!

Hugs

Carol x

Pack of CAS cards

Hi everyone,

Back in January I followed an online card class for making Clean and Simple Cards because it is a style I have a lot of difficulty with as a lover of buttons and ribbons and bows and dimensional flowers and hardware and..... you get the idea. Well I thoroughly enjoyed the class but I got behind and didn't manage to fit in all the assignments in time. One of the assignments was to make a pack of cards and as I usually never make more than 2 copies of any card, I wanted to give it a try. As you know, my daughter just turned 30 and so of course did a number of her friends. She wanted to give a couple of her friends, 30 gifts to open on the day and she commissioned me to make a couple of packs of cards to go in the pile. This gave me the incentive to get busy and this is what I came up with:-

a selection of ribbon banners for the sentiments

a mixture of bright flowers

set of stems for the flowers to sit on

a little mat and a 'thank you' sentiment

another mat and a 'just saying hello' sentiment

a handmade box, lid and bellyband

the finished product.

I put some music on and got on a roll with the die cutting and stamping and had a lovely time making the 2 packs of 6 cards.

Thanks for looking.

Hugs

Carol x

Zipper die card

Hello everyone,

Welcome to Ellen who became a new follower this week. I hope you had a good weekend and are ready to plunge into another week. We went to a really good concert on Saturday to celebrate International Women's Day. It was hosted by the St Petersburg Society and was called Ties of Friendship (between Manchester and St Petersburg), and I had no idea that there was such a large Russian community based in Manchester. I heard my first Balalaika orchestra and there were lots of people in traditional Russian dress. Then last night I hosted my friend's Hen Party which was a hoot and I've now got tons of photos to edit and pass along.

I'm still waiting for the latest parcel from Papertrey Ink to arrive but I bought the zipper die and stamp set from a seller on eBay and couldn't wait to try out an interactive card.

I don't know if you have seen this before but the die cuts a strip along the cardstock (the white loopy bit) and the little arrow says 'pull me'. When the recipient pulls the zip away, a message is revealed underneath. Of course I forgot to take a picture of the message which on this occasion says 'a wonderful day' and I couldn't unzip it to show you or I wouldn't be able to send the card!

I stamped the base card with flowers from Beautiful Blooms 2 in Raspberry Fizz ink  and used the same, larger flower on the pink panel but this time used versamark ink and embossed it with white embossing powder. The Wishing You sentiment and little arrow was from Movers and Shakers Sentiments. The white ribbon and little bow along with few gems to bling it up a little finished everything off. I can't wait to make another of these and next time I'll remember to take a photo of the hidden message!

As I've not followed any challenges for a while, I thought I would enter this one into this weeks Make it Monday challenge, the  Let's Craft and Create, challenge which is to use bows or buttons, and the Simon Says challenge which is to make a card for a Mother or a special girl.

Thanks for looking.

Hugs

Carol x

30th birthday card

Hi everyone,

Welcome to Karen who is a new follower this week. I'm taking a breather after my daughter's 30th birthday party which was great fun, and I'm hoping to do a little crafting this week. I'm gutted that I forgot to take my camera to the party so I'm hoping some of the guests will be able to provide a little photographic evidence that a good time was had by all! I tried to take a photo on my phone of my first attempt at making cake pops for a table centrepiece, but it hasn't come out very well. I got the idea for the fun sign from something I saw in Pinerest. I'm still getting to grips with my Silhouette Cameo and was quite pleased that I was able to weld letters together so easily to make the sign, and a little faux stitching brought it to life. I know the cake pops aren't very uniform but it was my first try and I can't wait to have another go!

Sadly I have no picture of my gorgeous birthday girl blowing out the candles on her cake but here is the card I made her :-

I cut the numbers on the Cameo and used the circles backround stamp from Round and Round to make the background. The sentiments were from Think Big Favourites 7 and Big Birthday Wishes. I'm really loving the Papertrey Ink twill ribbon- it has a soft sheen that reflects the light so beautifully.

That's all for now because I want to catch up on some blogs, but thanks for looking.

Hugs

Carol x