Decoupage cut out Clematis card

How crazy is this? I had to finish this card today (as I said yesterday) to be ready for Friday. The lady who it is for asked if she and her Husband could pop round so he could check his online banking. Sure, no problem, except I was in the throes of making the envelope and my PC is located in my craft room.. So I hid everything, and when they arrived he told me that it was her birthday today!!!! So what should of been an leisurely well thought out envelope front ended up being a mega rush job...and it shows. I am not happy with it. 
I'd already done the embossing and cut out and was planning how to write her name in photoshop and print a greeting and message on the inside of the card. All that went out of the window, and as you can see her name on the envelope is a hash job. Plus I could'nt print the message on the inside of the card because my printer refused to accept the thick cardstock  I'd used which in fact is watercolour practise paper, which is nice and thick, textured and not pure white.
Of course not having the time to prepare an alternative method, I just wrote all by hand. Shame because I spent so much time and consideration on the front of the card and the rest of it is literally thrown together. I would'nt mind but her Husband told me it was her birthday on friday...Grrrrr! I wont mention anything about 'Men' eh?

Butterfly quick card

Hello! I just found out yesterday that it is my neighbours Birthday this Friday, and that it is also my English friends birthday on the same day. She lives in the same village as I do, a newly installed UK escapee. We have people coming to stay Friday, so I have to make 2 cards pretty quick as well as have a real clean and tidy up of the house and garden before Friday.

I managed to make the 1st one yesterday that has butterflies on it, which is not my preferred type of picture. However I had a sheet of these pretty stickers, I liked the colours more than the content. The stickers are lightly glittery, so the grey card I placed behind each one is lightly glittered too, in case you are wondering why on earth I used grey!  The whole card is pearly and I made a sort of matching envelope for it from wallpaper. This card is for my French neighbour.

As I have said before the French do not 'do' cards really, so I wanted to keep it fairly simple. I did put some flowers on it, but it did not look right somehow, it sort of over-complicated it. So the flowers went on the envelope instead.
The birthday card I am going to make next for my English friend, will be a bit more elaborate as she has given me an order to make a 25th wedding anniversary card later in the year. I have a load of ideas that I want to test out!
Thanks for looking,  watch this space,  hopefully I'll have the next card finished by Thursday...fingers crossed.

3D Rainbow, easel type card

Always use a tripod eh? Especially when you wobble about like I do when trying not to!
So, the photos of the Rainbow card have turned out reasonably good for posting.

I made this for a lady who has always loved bright colours, especially rainbows. She now works for 'Rainbows' which is an organisation in UK which is something to do with children.
Originally I was going to do a basic rainbow easel card, but you know how it is, these things take on a life of their own.
For a change I made my own flowers this time, very thick ones too. The pots of gold I printed on my PC and I added some 'coins' spread out on the ground in front of each pot. The back of the card is clear acetate with a clear 'roof' like section from which I hung a double sided Sun and 2 silver lined clouds, so they twizzle round behind the rainbow.
Getting the lot to stand upright was tricky, in the end I placed a small pull out flap at the back to balance it all. I wont be making an envelope for this one as it would become crushed in the post so its going into a thin box, which I will decorate the inside at least.

Quick blue thank you card

I've spent the last week making a rainbow themed easel card, which I finished today, took a load of photos without use of the tripod and they are all blurry, tut! So I'll try again tomorrow. Meanwhile the ones I took of this blue thank you card turned out fine.

I made this card from some odd bits of paper and raided my 'flower' box. After every card I make, if I have bits of paper left over I punch out flowers for 'later use' as in this card. I added the pearly border because this 'thank you' is in relation to the recipients forthcoming marriage.
I have watched and read loads of tutorials on making various flowers, but I keep using the same old punch...how boring. There again, I just wanted something simple and quick for this particular card as I wanted to get it posted out pretty sharpish.
I hope you like it.

Birthday card for a singer

Its been quite a few weeks since I made a card as I seem to of been busy doing DIY around the house and trying to pot up all the 100's of seedling coming through in my greenhouse.
 This particular card I made this week is for a real tomboy lady's birthday who as well as being an 'off roading' freak in her top of the range Land Rover, likes to sing with 'big band' musicians. So I thought I'd use this as the theme, something a bit glitzy and more 'girly' than land rovers and muddiness. .

I sprayed the chipboard letters with glue then dipped them into fine glitter. I only hope it stays stuck on as I do not know any other way of gluing glitter down.

Card: with brooch embellishment

I bought this brooch ages ago and have been awaiting inspiration to use it, so here is what I did with it:
The sun has been shining today, but I got sunburn yesterday so today I stayed indoors and made this card instead.
The 3 purple-ish strips are glitter card, the centre cream paper is handmade. I added a few brads here and there, 2 of which are dragonflies which I think is the scene on the brooch. I just love the colours of the brooch which is why I bought it.
I have not made this card for anyone, so its the first of my 'stock' cards, hopefully I will sell it, I can always add a message on the front as required and of course make a matching envelope.

All white???

I never did make the mans 'hessian' card, I was out by a week on his birthday. An opportunity missed. However my Friend Val, its her birthday too next week and it was a perfect excuse to create a white card. I have been wanting to do a white card for a while and thought I'd have to wait until Xmas, or a wedding (too rare) so here it is my shabby chic white card.
Only problem was, was writing 'happy birthday' I did not want to use any colours. So I used some tiny bits of vellum I had left over, and blindly embossed on it by hand with a cuttlebug folder. I am not too happy with the result but I could'nt think of any other way. My one and only 'happy birthday' stamp was too large. Thats why I'm not keen on stamps. The vellum was then glued to clear acetate. I dont have any clear 'gems' unfortunately which I really would of liked to of added.

I wanted to add lots of textures and have a lavish amount of flowers bunched together. I've seen thhis done on other cards but mine, well, I dont think I have quite got the hang of it. Other than that I am happy with the result. I made a matching envelope out of white textured wallpaper which I'll photograph tomorrow.
 So here's the white card, all white?
                      

Another digi

I started a more complex one than the first one below, but I just could'nt do it, it was beyond me. Therefore I ended up finding this one, not as sophisticated as the 'Alice' below, but different. The tutorial for it made the face far more distorted than I have done it, I wanted to keep it more natural.

Hopefully Thursday I am going to get card making again, I shall have to day to myself, the weather is too bad to go gardening/riding my bikes and I have another mans birthday due next week. I am looking at using hessian fabric, weaving some rafia and other fibres. Well, thats the idea in my head, whether it turn out anything like that is another matter!

Not a card, digital art

I've been wanting to up my knowledge of photoshop for sometime so I bought a French photoshop magazine for advanced users. Yeah, dive in at the deep end eh? I had to spend 2 days in hospital recently and read it cover to cover and was itching to make a start when I got home.

This took me 11hrs to create, should of been about 2hrs!  I chose this particular tutorial first because not of the actual end result, but because of the steps involved taught me what I wanted to know.
Anyway, its supposed to be based on Alice in wonderland, hence the magic mirror in her hand. However, by the time I'd reached the bit for adding the white rabbit.....I opted to add a white cat instead, by then I had some idea of how it all worked.
The original had much less colour in it, rather gloomy I thought so the overall colours are much brighter.
I did enjoy this project even though it was hard going at first.
Layers???? easy peasy lol. not! There must be at least 40 layers in this project.

Thank you to Alina Silwinska who wrote the tutorial in the magazine. The magazine is in several languages, downloadable on www.psdmag.org
Any comments welcomed

 

Bits and pieces

Hi, hope you have all had a great weekend?
We went to a car boot sale yesterday (yard sale/vide grenier, quite a rare occurance in these parts) and I was really pleased to of picked up a few craft items for the grand sum of 10 euros. Theres a dozen or so ribbons, mainly halloween, some great narrow crocheted lace and some ric-rac plus a box of stamps. There are 3 alphabet stamps of various sizes all the letter 'M' I can only think of M-erry Christmas as a use so far. But there are 4 roller type stamps too, endless pattern! These I will definitely use as they are quite a universal pattern. I have not tried them out yet.

I also picked up a couple of balls of 'furry' wool, wool like all crafting products seems expensive to me here in France. One is brown, 1 is black so they are fairly neutral colours, great fibre embellishments.
I know this post is not very exciting, but for me this was a terrific find. Oh yes I picked up a very pretty flat oval enamel broach for next to nothing which if I wrench the fittings from it, it will make a fab embellishment.
As an added bonus there was a guy there who sharpened my all my craft scissors to perfection. I wish I'd taken my secateurs with me!