Sonny's 1st Birthday

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I got a little busy towards the end of last year, and there were a few cards I didn't manage to post, so hopefully I'll get round to it soon!
I cannot believe that my cousin's going to be 1 in a week, last year flew by! So I've not been back from holiday long but I've been busy making this card, which I'm taking to the Playground with me!

I started by cutting the train shape from plain brown paper, and then the blue and white shape, which was glued on top. I then cut a small square for the window. I cut the top shape from plain orange paper, and then used my finger to add some browny-orange paint for effect. This was then stuck on with foam pads so it was raised. I did the steam by cutting some circles out of white paper and again painting it on with my finger. I stuck all of this onto some plain cream card and cut around it, with the fold being the left hand straight edge, and cut around the bit that sticks out at the top of the cab. I found some buttons and stuck them on with PVA glue, but I'm never sure how well the glue works, have any of you got any suggestions of ways to stick buttons on?!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas :)

Christmas Tag No. 7

Hmmm... It seems I get so many more ideas when I'm supposed to be doing other work, than when I'm not! But with me off on holiday on Saturday I went in to speedy crafter mode this weekend!

I finally used up a piece of backing card that's been with my other snippets since last year, and I'd never had the chance to use it! Soooo.... I'm going to pop by the swings at the Playground :) Quite simply, I cut out the holly shapes from some plain green card and drew the line on with green pencil. I stuck them on with foam sticky pads. I found the three berries, sequins, and stuck them on top with some slightly taller sticky foam pads... Pretty simple really :)

Cafe de Paris

The theme this year is Socks in the City... which probably doesn't mean anything to you, so let me explain. For a good ten years now, we've gone to France with the family, a total of 11 of us to begin with, with additions along the way, and now we've grown to 15! As there's little space in the car we decided to buy themed presents, so everyone buys everyone else a present to do with their theme. This has ranged from, all 10 presents having to fit in a shoebox (which was decorated), each present fitting in an envelope, colours, numbers, having to fit it in a buttertub and star signs. This year, each present has to fit inside a sock, as well as having something to do with a city, mine is Monte Carlo.
Now I've got the explanation out the way,  can show you this:

This is going to hold the voucher for one of the presents, with the gap in the middle showing the voucher. I used colour pencils for the sign and then used glitter for the writing. Quite simple really! But at least now you can start thinking about the difficulties I've been having with my shopping.... how many female presents can you think of that fit in a sock and relate to Monte Carlo?! :)

Christmas Tag No. 6

OK, so I'm now halfway through the tags at least! Well, now the exams have finished I can do those in the next couple of weeks (hopefully!). And I'm going to pop to the Playground with this, show the girls what I've made :)

I used up some a Christmas paper that my sister bought me last year, I have a problem where I don't want to use them because they're so nice! I found a word that was in two places, which was the dotted Christmas, and cut the front rectangle so the top had about half of it on there. I then made pouch out of thin white card and stuck that to the back. For the insert, I cut a 'T' shape, making sure that the Christmas was going to align with the bottom. I then stuck some plain white card over that, for me to write on. The insert then slots in to the pouch on the back of the first rectangle. I also added the ribbon, which I stuck on with double sided tape.

(Please check out some of the other Christmas tags I've made, whilst you're here!)

Christmas Tag No. 5

I popped to St. Neots on the weekend and found some really nice wrapping paper with baubles on. I thought I could wrap my Mum's present with it, and then realised it would look much nice as a tag :D - Maybe I'll do both!


















So I stuck the wrapping paper on another piece of card to make it stronger and cut out the tag shape. I then, quite simply, cut out the Christmas tree bauble from another section of the paper and used foam sticky fixers to raise it up from the card. So simple, yet I loved the paper and HAD to use it :)

Christmas Tag No. 4

I don't think I've made so many cads in such a short space of time before, but after my brainwave earlier on this week, what else could I do?!

I cut out a Christmas Tree shape from some green card. I then attacked some green paper with my Christmas Tree hole punch (I don't know if you can even see that, my camera was playing up today!). I used PVA glue, and as I would with glitter, sprinkled the tree cutouts on top. I then added the brown ones for the pot at the bottom. I found a gold star on the floor (?!) and stuck it on top. I then added some dots of gold glitter glue for the baubles. Finally  stuck this to a rectangular piece of card and cut the edges with my corner punch and embosser.

Christmas Tag No. 3

When...Santa got stuck up the chimney, he began to shout...!

Half a day of school canceled because of the heating not working? Ooh, yes please! I took the opportunity to come up with this, after my brainwave of ideas in the middle of my French exam this morning :)

I used a 10 x 8cm card with curved corners. I did the chimney bricks with some orange pieces of paper, leaving some gaps in between. You can't see it very well because my phone camera's a bit pants, but I coloured the snow with light blue and grey pencils, before going round the edge with a thin line of glitter. I also coloured in Santa's legs with pencil. The fur on the top of his boots is some handmade paper with bits of glitter in and the boots are done with some patterned embossed black paper. 

Sean's Birthday 2012

Among all the Christmas cards, there's also quite a few birthdays this time of year, which I find very hard to make once I'm in the Christmas mood!

I haven't got so much time this year, so it's not quite to the scale of the card I made last year  but there we go!
I used a blank card and coated it wit yellow paper, and then put a square of black card over the top. I cut the beer glass shape from plain white card, and stuck yellow rectangles on top of that. I then cut some different sized circles from the white card and coloured in the edges with felt tips, before gluing them on top to finish!

G'ma's Birthday 2012

Summer feels like such a long time ago now, but I haven't been organised enough to post for a while. I made this one in July for my Grandma's birthday, because she's always in the garden!

The background is plain green card, and I used cream paper to back the individual sections. I used 10mm fringed quilling paper for the orange flowers, and tightly curled 3mm yellow paper inside the heads. I stuck green quilling paper on its side for the stems and collected them neatly under the pot. For the seedlings I used 3mm brown paper made into a square, and two tear shaped green quills, surrounding a piece of green paper again on its side. The spade is a 2cm piece of paper rolled up with a 3mm stuck underneath, followed by a piece of silver card folded up at the sides for the head of the spade. The packet is just a piece of paper with seeds drawn on with pen.
Lots of quite simple parts that added up to make a card my Grandma loved :)

Father's Day 2012

It's been too long, I know! There's even been cards that I've forgotten to photograph and had to ring people up and ask them to send me some pictures! I must sort it out!

A card that I made a long time ago now, was for Father's Day...

So it was another simple card to make, I just cut the card so that the front had the collar on it, I made that by just folding it down. I didn't have any striped paper, so printed dark blue stripes on to some plain light blue paper. I stuck an extra bit of striped paper down the front to give it more of a shirt style look. I used the left over white card and stuck it to another piece of striped paper for the pocket, and stuck buttons down the front. Before sticking the pieces of paper on, I folded down the edges slightly to make it more realistic.
Quite simple really :)

Sean's Birthday - December 2011

I made this one towards the end of last year, but I have to say I am unbelievably proud of it! I made it for my cousin, Sean who turned 41, and he loves lots of sports.

It's all done with coloured pencils, and, other than the books, all the little bits are done on other card and stuck on. The jumper, trousers, tennis ball, golf clubs and cricket bat are stuck on with some VERY useful foam pads, which are about 0.5cm x 0.5cm, and are sticky on both sides to give a raised look. The doors folded shut to reveal a HAPPY BIRTHDAY on the doors. But, by far my favourite part of this card, were the little coat hangers! I got some ordinary electricians wire (From my Dad!) and stripped it back, or you could use soldering wire or if there is actually crafting wire?! But any way! And I made a small triangle, with the two ends continued on quite far, bent one of the ends straight upwards, and twisted the other one around it. I then bent the top round and cut off the extra bits!

I think this card took me a solid 4 hours, and it got quite tedious towards the end but the end product was SO lovely that it was utterly worth while! The next post is another one I'm incredibly proud of, and it's very very similar too!