Butterfly Heart

This card is a kind of "homage" to one of my favourite cardmakers, Michelle Short who makes the most gorgeous cards over at the Card Grotto. A couple of times this week she's posted cards made using a die from Memory Box but as I recently bought a second hand Eclips & the Ecal software to go with it I decided to have a go at creating something similar, and this is the result.

Ecal is really easy to use so the heart only took me about 30 minutes to create in the software - getting it to cut properly out of 300gsm cardstock took a bit longer! I really should buy some new blades as I'm still persevering with the used ones that came with my machine and they are definitely past their best. Still, I eventually worked out the settings as you can see below:

The finished heart is 10.5 cm across (just over 4 inches), each one of the butterflies is 1.5 cm across at its widest point (just over half an inch) so you can see how intricate the cut is. I created the greeting in Craft Artist 2 Professional and mounted the whole thing on pearlescent DCWV cardstock. A bit of Wink of Stella clear on the capital letters & I decided to call it quits. Hope you like it!

I'm joining the linky party over at Croft Crafts this week, why not take a look?

Cardstock: Xerox Colotech Plus 300gsm, DCWV 

Die-cut Dad

A couple of challenges caught my eye this week. The one at Addicted to CAS is die cuts and I decided to combine it with the sketch challenge number 274 at Clean & Simple Stamping. It was my husband's birthday yesterday so this card is from our son to his Dad.

I wasn't able to stick exactly to the sketch, which might disqualify me, but that's because the embossing folder wasn't big enough for the whole piece of card so I had to run it through twice.The resulting line looked bad so I covered it with the star border.

All the die cuts were done on my new (well, new to me!) Sizzix Eclips which I really enjoyed playing with. This was my first attempt with the Ecal software which I found really easy to use, and I created the basic design in a matter of minutes.

Cardstock: Xerox Colotech Plus 300gsm, Coredinations, Papermania Kraft

Stamp: Elzybells (no longer available)

Ink: Memento Peanut Brittle

Poppy Sympathy Card

Sympathy cards are so difficult but I always think poppies are quite appropriate. This was coloured using dry Derwent Inktense pencils blended with a blender pencil, then masked so I could do the background stamping.

I never intended the script stamp to be so patchy but my first attempt, using the first generation ink, was too dominant so I decided the second generation ink would be better. I'm entering this into this week's challenge at Keep It Simple, where the theme is text.

Cardstock: Xerox Colotech Plus 300gsm

Stamps: Hero Arts Delicate Blossoms, Inkylicious Script Stamp,

Greeting: Inspired by Stamping

Inks: Memento London Fog

Inktense Pencils

Fabulous 50

My sister asked me to make a card for a good friend of hers, a lovely lady who was my son's Year 6 teacher. She's very feminine so I took the opportunity to make a variation on a dress card I've seen a few times on the internet, using some papers I've had in my stash for ages.

I got the template from here, using old-fashioned tracing methods & cutting out by hand. I used my Wink of Stella on the bodice (although you can't see it on any of the photos, unfortunately) and found some matching ribbon in my stash. 

The ribbon buckle is from Meiflower and that was the only tricky part of the card, because the skirt sticks out so I found it difficult to get the buckle to lie flat. The greeting was created in Craft Artist 2 Professional then cut from a modified Spellbinders tag die.

A normal envelope wouldn't do for this, of course, so I made my own, decorated with matching papers:

Cardstock: Xerox Colotech Plus

Papers: Cart-Us Romantic Flowers

I've never participated in a blog link party before but there's a first time for everything, so I'm taking part here.

Christmas Catch-Up Part 3

The last of the Christmas cards; the first was to my Mum from my son using stamps from and a liberal sprinkling of Wink of Stella (again):

Cardstock: Bazzill Basics, Xerox Colotech Plus

Ink: Adirondack Eggplant

Stamps: Kirsty Wiseman for Personal Impressions

The second card is from my son to my other half, and was entirely made from digital downloads, the image being coloured with Promarkers:

Cardstock: Xerox Colotech Plus

Santa Image: Cool Santa on Skateboard from Pink Cat Studios

Backing papers: MyGrafico

Greeting: free (not sure where from)

And last, but not least, this is the card I sent to our 2 nephews, neither of whom had a particularly good end to 2013 so I hope 2014 is better for them both!

Cardstock: Anna Marie Designs, Green: Bazzill sanded & recoloured with Adirondacks

Stamps: Woodware

Embossing folder free with magazine

Christmas Catch-up Part 2

This was our son's Christmas card this year. As an avid guitarist the phrase "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" seemed most appropriate.  I was going to cut out the tree & guitar on my new Eclips but ended up doing it by hand (long story!). I got the tree from here then paper-pieced it. The guitar was stamped in Adirondack Red Pepper then glittered with my Wink of Stella clear pen & the rest was done in Craft Artist 2 Professional:

Cardstock: Xerox Colotech Plus

Ink: Adirondack Red Pepper

Stamps: Inspired by Stamping