Bits and Bobs...

Its been a bit all over the place recently on the card making front, I have done a wedding invitation order, am working on quite a few male birthday cards and have had ALOT of fun with some digi stamps from Saturated Canary.

The invites were a joy to make - it was lovely to be able to work on some wedding stationary that wasn't mine tbh!!! I was given the brief of black and white damask with dark red as an accent colour. I made a range of different styled invites for the couple to look through and then from those they picked the invite they wanted. After a lot of emails and messages back and forth between me and the bride we finalised the font, wording and layout to exactly how she wanted. 

The black, white and red combo looked stunning on the final design, definitely a combo I'd like to work with again.

The male birthday cards are still works in progress so once they are finished i will post some piccys - working on two 80ths (for the same man) and an 18th card. I always find male cards quite difficult to do, so this is a challenge for me to say the least!! A fun challenge though!!

I had my eyes opened to the beautiful world of Saturated Canary by a friend this past week, who alerted me to a free digi stamp on the website. The digis are gorgeous!! - and SOOOOO fun to colour!!

I have 4 digis from them and I had a bit of a play with them today!

(I apologise for the crappy lighting in the photos!! NEED to get a decent light in here!!)

i used the circle framelit as a template to curve the clear stamp sentiment. 

thought this would make a beautiful card for a bridesmaid to give to a bride...or visa versa!!

am COMPLETELY in love with this digi!! everything about her is gorgeous!! including her cute kitty!!

I have used glossy accents on the balloon to give it dimension and shine. 

the HUGE eyes make these girls SO pretty!! and the quirky clothes allow you to go wild with the colour! I need more of these digi's in my life.....and so starts an unhealthy obsession with Saturated Canary digi stamps!! there are so many on the website - you can check them out HERE.

so thats what i have been up to recently! think I'm going to go and print some more of these digis off and colour some more :) - might work on colouring hair, haven't got the hang of it yet!!

By for now - speak soon.xxxx

Oh, hello Mojo!!

Wow - well it really shows how long its been since I posted something.... blogger is COMPLETELY different!! It took me about 5 minutes to find the 'write new post' button! :)

Anyway,  I have been in a total mojo-less pit for the past couple of months and I've ground to a complete halt with my crafting, there's lots of reasons, which i wont go into, but I'm hoping that my mojo is back now!! I had a last minute order for a card on Sunday so here's hoping the pressure will give me the kick up the bum I need!!!

Since my last post I have made a couple of cards;
with some inspirational help from a Facebook friend I created some 'Super' cards!! :)

superhero themed cards

...a card for a friend to let her know I was thinking of her:

Tim Holtz ticket, butterflies coloured with alcohol inks

...a Baptism card with beautiful 3d roses on it:

I used sizzix framelits for the sentiment and backing

...a few birthday cards for the future inlaws:

Tim Holtz style rosettes

Simple layered butterfly punches

And a steampunk mothers day card!!

Kenny K digi Stamp

AND I have been designing my own wedding stationary!! i never knew just how creative you could be using Microsoft Word!! I have to reccommend a few websites for free fonts - without these sites, my wedding stationary would have been in Comic Sans!!! lol!!! check them out: http://www.dafont.com/ and http://www.1001freefonts.com/ are FAB!! LOADS of different fonts to choose from, great for cardmaking and scrapbooking too!

Looking back over the preview of this post, I can see that I have been quite busy, I guess sometimes it takes seeing everything that you have done in a list like this to see that you have achieved quite alot!! OK, feeling positive again and I think I feel my Mojo returning... I'm going to go and crack on with this Birthday card order.

Big Love, Speak soon.
xxxxx

Happy 2012!!

HELLO - and happy new year!!! I hope all of you got what you wanted from Santa!!!
Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I haven't been a very well bunny!! ....After the Christmas fair I was feeling awesome for about a week… and then I slipped my disc. Bloody typical – I'm just thankful I guess that my body had the decency of waiting until after the fair was over. The back injury literally put me flat out of action until the New Year. I was on horrendous amounts of strong painkillers so Xmas and New Year are pretty much fuzzy memories. I did have a fantabulous time though – this year is the 1^st year in our relationship where me and the OH have actually spent Xmas DAY together!!!! I am usually in Portugal seeing my parents and he is usually working. Not only did we spend Xmas day together – we also spent New Years Eve together too!!! 1^st ever midnightNew Year kisses!!!! So this festive season has been SO special because on top of all that – it is my 1^st as an engaged girly!!

ALSO - I have given up smoking!!! After puffing away for more than half my life (awful considering I’m only 27!!) I have given up. Had my last one at a few mins to midnight, New Years Eve. Its going ok so far – hard, but that means its worth doing!!! 

Now for something a little more crafty.....

I bought a magazine at Morrison’s the other day and it had these cute free stamps on the front.  Having not been able to sit for the previous 2 weeks with my back - and trying to find things to do to curb my nicotine cravings – I jumped at the chance to have a play with these lovely floral stamps.

 Here's what I came up with. I knew I couldn't sit for long (back is still giving me jip) so I stuck to a basic design and had a little play with my pro markers. I kept to the same image on each card, only changing the colours. I'm pleased with how they turned out!!! 

I picked the big corner floral stamp to be the focal point of the card and also used the ‘with thanks’ stamp from the same set as the sentiment. I used my Sizzix framelits to do my circles, raised the mounted sentiment on foam pads and bish, bash, bosh I had 4 cards in next to no time!!!

I have said to myself LOADS that I am going to do this ‘set of 4’ thing with all my stamps!! Some them lay dormant for so long and I think this ‘matching set’ idea is a great way to get using stamps that don’t necessarily get a look in when I am making specific cards. These stamp sets are made to coordinate with each other so it should be quite easy to come up with a ‘set of 4’. They don’t necessarily have to be the same but they must look like they go together. Right - so, that's a little challenge I am going to set myself. might get me crafting more too - never a bad thing!!! :)

Thats it for now peeps.

Keep smiling, speak soon.

xxxx

Tattoo Themed Cards...

hello lovelies!!

have had a good week - got cracking with my xmas stock last weekend and got quite alot done!! well, 20 cards done. but that means that I only have 80 to go!! :) shouldn't take that long! *giggles nervously* if only I didn't have a full time job to get in the way of all my crafting!

I've been playing with biggy ALOT since I got back from holiday...suddenly all those dies and embossing folders I have actually work and look good!! it's nice not to have to pack underneath them with pieces of paper to get the right thickness. as a treat I bought myself 3 sets of the Sizzix Framelits.... LOVE them!

I bought 'Fancy Labels' , 'Tickets' and 'Circles'. I would personally say that the circles have moved their way into my 'essential' crafting kit!! I can't remember how many times I have tried to find something round to draw around... its either too big or too small...then there is the issue of cutting them out! never very circular when I had finished with the scissors!! these Framelits are AMAZING and I WILL be buying the other shapes when payday rolls round! :)

  

I had a nice break from xmas stock today - had an order for a male birthday card - theme 'tattoo'. I have some awesome tattoo stamps that I bought from Artful Splodger however, I felt the main stamps were a little too girly for my central image so created my own tattoo image. I used the star stamp from the Bombshell collection for the star banner at the top. I downloaded a free tattoo font from the internet and printed out the 'happy birthday' onto the same paper as I used for the background. 

I then cut out some wings and the heart and used foam pads to give the card some dimension. for a final touch I added a ruby coloured gem to the heart. I am VERY happy at how this card turned out - so much so I am gonna knock some more of these out and take them to the craft fair in December!!! there is a definite gap in the market for these tattoo themed cards!!! 

I do love my Bombshell Stamps to pieces so I thought I would show you some of the cards I have made using them - I love the retro tattoo look... lemme know what you think!

http://www.artfulsplodger.co.uk/bombshell-stamps

well, I think that's about it for now. 

keep smiling, keep crafting, speak soon.xxxx