Card Making

Good morning all,

Todays card is all about texture. I really wanted to use up some of the flowers in my stash as I hadn’t used them in a while so I grabbed the tub and set to work. To start I embossed a piece of kraft cardstock to use as the basis of the card and I used a piece of yellow printed scrapbook paper with a sizzix die to create a label shape. I knew that I wanted to add a pop of sunshine yellow, but not a lot to overwhelm the card. At that point I knew that i would pretty much cover all of the yellow label, but it would act as an anchor for all the other embellishments.

I picked up some seam binding from the fabric shop not long ago and the great thing about this is that you can recolour the ribbon to make it match your project. My original idea was to use the original off-white colour but it made the card quite bland. Instead I rubbed some distress ink onto a craft sheet, spritzed with water and dripped the ribbon into the pools of inky liquid. If you look closely at the picture you can see the gradients of colour- its so pretty, and I think it adds even more dimension to the card!

For the greeting I stuck a long strip of kraft cardstock onto a strip of pattern paper that incorporated the colours of my project. I notched the ends with scissors and folded the card strip to create a banner shape. Then I added a cute rub on.

I think this is one of those cards that will probably need a box for posting, otherwise we might flatten the design, so I better go and make one now.

Thanks for stopping by!

I don’t think I have shared these three cards yet even though they were made earlier last year.  Forgive me if I have shared them and forgotten about it. Stranger things have happened before! 🙂

I am really loving using my silhouette to personalise cards. You know when you are little and you go into a garden centre, or a touristy place and there are pens and keyrings and other such wonderful things with names on them- well, I loved looking through to see if I could find my name. It almost never was there, or if it was, it was spelt incorrectly as Leslie (which in the UK is actually more commonly used as the masculine form!).

When we were having our own bambino we wanted a name that was unusual. I didn’t want our child to be just another Joanne, or Emily or Andrea. I want to teach her that its okay to be different. In fact, that its wonderful to be different! That she is unique and wonderful and she doesn’t have to do what everyone else is doing just because everyone else is doing it.  We went with the name Piper, and even two and a half years in, when people hear it they usually exclaim “oh, thats an unusual name!“. {Sometimes you can tell that they are really saying “OMG how weird!” LOL.}

Did we stop to think about those pesonalised keychains and pencils? In fact we did, but choosing an unusual name does not exclude personalised paraphernalia when there is a crafty mom in the house!

And I think that most people get a little kick out of seeing their name on a card or a gift. I guess its an another way to make a connection with them, in the same way as you would use favourite colours or a suitable theme.

And so I’ll say it again, I LOVE using my silhouette to make personalised cards! Lets take a look at three that I have made:

The first card up the top there is for Ankita and Vivek to congratulation them on their lovely new house. A basic application of using the type tool in the silhouette software.

Next up is Sarah’s birthday card. I decided to put a fun spin on the traditional greeting and say Happy Sarah Day instead of Happy Birthday. Just cos i could!

For this one I made the text in photoshop elements, flattened the image and then imported it to the silhouette software. I love this effect- will definitely be doing this one again!

And can you guess who this engagement card was for? haha! For this one I used my wacom to draw the design in photoshop before importing into the silhouette software.

This is lots of fun. I think I will be doing this more and more and more…