Silhouette Cameo Shaped Christmas tree card

Hello everyone,

I've been seeing quite a few Christmas cards around on blogs recently and I've begun to feel that I should be making an early start on mine so that I don't have my usual rush in the madness that is the run up to Christmas at hour house. When I saw that the challenge over at Less is More   this week is to make a shaped card, I decided to make my first Christmas card of the year. I recently completed an on line class in using my Silhouette Cameo, so I found a Christmas Tree shape, flipped and welded and created this shaped card as my entry.

It has more than one layer but I think this is allowed this week, and I used Papertrey Holiday Lights stamps to stamp and emboss in white.

Thanks for looking in and have a great week.

Hugs

Carol x

Papertrey Ink birthday card

Hello everyone and welcome to Kez who is a new follower this week. Summer has finally arrived in Manchester, I have a great weekend planned seeing family and friends, someone else will be doing the cooking, some chilled white wine will be imbibed and all seems pretty peachy in my little corner of the world. To top it all today is PTI blog hop day and this is the inspiration picture that Nichole gave us this time

I loved these colours that take me right out of my comfort zone and I used a distressed chevron stamp for the background which gave an unusual (for me anyway) graphic look

click to enlarge

I matted the background onto spring moss card and cut a half and half die out of black card, and then again from spring moss card, which I cut down to provide a sentiment strip for the centre.The flower was also cut twice in the same colours with the Bloom Builders 3 die to give a full, two toned flower and a gem was coloured with a Copic marker to add a little bling to the centre.

A sentiment from Birthday basics was stamped and embossed in black to finish it off.

I quite liked this design so I decided to make it again in one of my favourite colours and I was so surprised at how much colour changes the feel of a design.

I can't wait to get round and see what all the other hoppers made. Thanks for looking.

Hugs
Carol x

Papertrey Ink birthday/anniversary card

Hello everyone,

I hope you are enjoying your weekend and getting some down time after another week has zoomed by. My husband and I, along with some friends, went to an illustrated talk last night on the National Parks of Great Britain. It is so easy to forget what a beautiful country we live in and when I saw the slides of all the different National Parks, I was amazed at the variety of landscapes we have here without having to jet round the world to find them. I have yet to visit them all and have added some of them to my mental bucket list, but we are so lucky to have the Peak District, Snowdonia, Lake District and Yorkshire Dales National Parks all within day trip distance from home. Now if we only had the weather you get abroad .... sigh.

We are off to Oxfordshire tomorrow to explore that area of the world. I want to visit some of the beautiful Oxford buildings that I have only seen on the 'Morse' programmes. One day is reserved for a visit to Blenheim Palace where Winston Churchill was born, and after that we will just go with the flow. Before I start to pack, I just wanted to share a card and tag I made which is a variation on a butterfly card that I made a little while ago. Since doing the CAS course, I have really liked the sight of white space on my cards and it also has my favourite dotty ribbon on it:-

click to enlarge

I cut flower apertures in the top layer and raised it with foam to give some dimension

I also made a little tag in the same colours to go on the present.

These sunny colours are a little outside my comfort zone but they really lift the spirits. All the materials are from Papertrey Ink.

Thanks for looking and have a great week.

Hugs

Carol x

CAS card gift pack

Hello everyone,

I hope you are having a good week and getting some craft time for yourself. I found a new (to me) challenge blog called Less is More and after following the CAS card on line course in January, I thought I should give this a go. The challenge is a

ONE LAYER CARD

This time we have the stipulation to

USE THREE STAMPS

not four, not two... but 3!

I very rarely make a one layer card and I never know when to stop adding things to a card so this was very challenging for me, but I went through my stamps and decided to make up a small set of note cards as a thank you gift. I used 4inch by 4 inch cards

frame stamp WMS , sentiment PTI  and cupcake Personal Impressions

all stamps Personal Impressions

house Polkadoodles, sentiment and hearts PTI

all 3 stamps PTI

all three stamps were PTI

Fence and bird PTI, sentiment 4th Dimension

I was surprised how quickly the cards were made so they would be ideal for mass production.

 I needed a gift pack to put them in so I took some pearl card and made a folder to pop  the cards and envelopes in,

added some ribbon on the outside

and used some dies and a thank you stamp to put on the front.

These will be a handy little gift to have on hand and I am entering it into Less is More week 67 challenge. Do pop over there and see all the wonderful inspiration.

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs

Carol x

wedding scrapbook

Hello everyone, and welcome to Sasha who is a new follower this week. I've just had a lovely few days away in East Yorkshire with my husband, and when I returned, I thought our house looked a bit grubby. It is obviously time for a spring clean, so I started on a couple of the rooms today and now I feel quite virtuous.

I finally finished the wedding scrapbook and it has been packed off in the post to my friend. You may remember that one of my oldest friends got married in April and asked me to take the photographs. To say I was anxious about doing this is an understatement, but I had a go and then made up an album to give to the happy couple. Christine's style is very spare, and she doesn't go in for girly frilliness, but she does love flowers, so I tried to incorporate this into the album. I forgot to take photographs of all the layouts, but if you are interested in scrap booking, grab a cup of coffee and have a browse through some that were included.

click on all photo's to enlarge

This was the title page, and I decided to make the picture black and white for a timeless kind of feel. The letters and shadows were cut out on Cam (my Silhouette Cameo).

Apart from the first and last page, I did double page layouts throughout the album

I used PTI flower and button dies to make the floral embellishments on this page, and Cam came up trumps for the lettering again.

 The rose background paper had touches of glitter on it too. 

The PTI half and half dies  and heart border die were used on this page.

Christine's daughters are so gorgeous and needed little embellishment.  I just used a Cuttlebug folder to emboss the champagne glasses in the centre of the page.

The letters were cut on Cam.

I love these few pictures of Simon that I snapped as he was waiting for Christine to come downstairs in her wedding outfit. Another Cuttlebug embossing folder and letters from Cam were all that was needed.

This beautiful paper could have been left unembellished but I had to add a couple of PTI butterflies to give a little dimension. 

 I cut into one of the lower leaves so it popped over the photograph.

Christine's lovely  Grandchildren were Bridesmaids

and I used the PTI banner diesand some metal words to decorate this layout.

 I was amazed how well these thin letters were cut by Cam!

I used one of the PTI Think Big Favourites stamp for the 'Celebrate' panel

and tiny squares of coordinating paper to make the borders

This next layout shows photos of them signing the register after the ceremony. (The bottom photo shows me and my husband with them after we witnessed their signatures.)

I used stamps from PTI Love Tags and the Christmas Labels die to embellish the page.

Some metal flower plaques and a metal plate saying 'to have and to hold' is on the opposite page.

I made the final page suitable for a photo frame, in case they would like to take it out of the album. 

I used some Love Lives Here dies, a Memory Box foliage die, and some brown ribbon on this page. The captions reads 'Christine and Simon have tied the knot, 4th April 2012 and underneath I have used some twine to tie a knot and fixed it to the page.

Phew! If you have stuck with me to this point - thank you. I didn't realise what a long post it would turn out to be. I hope they like it!

Hugs

Carol x

PTI belated birthday card

Hello everyone, and welcome to Anne and Carole who are new followers this week.

I hope you are having a good weekend and enjoying the sunshine if you are blessed with some. I'm nearly finished with the scrapbook I have been making, and I'm still stressing about it.  I find making a scrapbook for someone else is so much harder than making one for myself. It think it has something to do with not wanting to disappoint them and trying to capture their style rather than my own. Oh well!  I haven't made any new cards this week, so I thought I'd share one I made a little while ago.

This was a birthday card from my stash using one of PTI's world of flowers stamps and when I discovered I had forgotten a friend's birthday, I added the belated stamp from Waltzing Mouse stamps to the top and got it into the post fast. I'm still trying to master Copic colouring so don't look too closely!

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by.

Hugs

Carol x