Par fect Birthday

So there are only so many variation on a golfing theme.  After making the pom-pom flowers at Christmas I thought about how to transfer that idea to paper.  I also needed a card for my sports enthusiast BIL. 

I think this almost works...

The fringe for the grass.  The black oval as the hole.  The circle that is debossed to look like a golf ball.

And of course the personalization on the ball!  I will say I attempted to airbrush some depth on the ball.  Something I need to keep working on.

Ingredients

Card size - 8.5in x 5.5in

Card stock - Georgia Pacific, Revelations, The Paper Source

Stamps - Just Rite Stampers

Ink - Memento

Misc- Copics with airbrush; Swiss dots embossing folder





Soccer/Football - A different perspective

Just when you thought I had finished with the soccer/football cards - I put a different spin on it (get it?!)  OK I won't dwell on that I can hear the pun groan from here.

I decided I wanted the perspective of the crowd and goal.  So I stamped the crowd on my 5.5 in x 8.5 in cardstock and randomly spot colored in the crowd.  I didn't want them to be more than the background so I didn't use any loud colors just grays, blues and neutrals.

I then layered the grass green paper over the bottom 2/5ths of the card and cut the slot.  I wish I could say it was meticulous planning.. OH WAIT! With meticulous planning I realized that I could match up the front "grass" stripes with the back of the slot.

At this point I thought the "hard part" was done.  Little did I know! I have had this plastic mesh that came off some duty free for a while thinking it would make a great net.  I ran it through my Xyron... it lifted off the card.  I tried again.  It lifted again.  Thought maybe I could slightly melt it to the card with my heat gun and it started to shrivel. YIKES!  In the end good ol fashioned white glue to the rescue and an acrylic block to hold it down.

I think the rest is pretty self explanatory (or I have already said it in at least 3 of the previous 5 posts). 

Ingredients

Card size - 8.5 x 5.5 in

Cardstock- Neenah Solar White

Paper - The Paper Source pack

Stamps - Viva Las Vegastamps (crowd), GinaK (Little Tees, Sporty Accessories), Just Rite Stampers (Shirt lettering & numbers), Stampendous (Flexible Friendship Wishes)

Ink - Memento Tuxedo black, Versamark, Brilliance Victorian Violet (I think)

Color - Copics

Accessories -  White & Clear embossing powder, Pennies, Fun foam (for dimension), Foam Tape square.

A revisit less dimension sans cat, larger circle

At this point I think you could say I have this card nailed down.  Now I know a lot of people would tut tut at recreating different versions of this card for so many people.  Can I just say, do you know how hard it is to make a card that directly appeals to male interests?  I see it all the time on Splitcoaststampers.  Cries of help regarding male cards.  I also made this interactive and tactile.  Simple pleasure of rolling that ball up and down the pitch seems to bring the brightest smiles to the men in my life.  They really seemed to love it.  It is like a card version of a video game! Result!

The only major change is that I had run out of foam tape and started using fun foam from my stash and truthfully it worked better the card was much less springy.  If I make another one of these cards I will definitely be using fun foam.  I did use foam tape square with the ball

Ingredients

Card size - 8.5 x 5.5 in

Paper - The Paper Source pack

Stamps - GinaK (Little Tees, Sporty Accessories), Just Rite Stampers (Shirt lettering & numbers), Stampendous (Flexible Friendship Wishes)

Ink - Memento Danube blue Tuxedo black;  Versamark 

Color - Copics to match the Sheffield Wednesday kit.

Accessories -  Black embossing powder, Spellbinders Circle Nestabilities, Pennies, Fun foam (for dimension), Foam Tape square.

Triple Teamed Birthday

Sorry about blurring the names but it was a bit TMI.  Still numbers of favorite players and last time England won the world cup are on this one.  This card was for the hubs.  He follows at least three different football teams (Liverpool FC, Sheffield Wednesday, and Rochdale) rather religiously.  I had already thought what can I do differently, then I decided that I could spin one of the jersey's.  Now you would think ok, that's the end of this episode. Same but different of the previous incarnation.  The real story about this card is that my hubs turns to me AFTER I have made this card and says.  "You know you should make a card with the shirt as the spinner!" So either this card is pure genius or pure "RutRoh" to quote Scooby. I'm going for great minds thinking alike and genius! LOL wouldn't you?

Ingredients

Card size - 8.5 x 5.5 in

Paper - The Paper Source pack

Stamps - GinaK (Little Tees), Just Rite Stampers (Shirt lettering & numbers), Stampendous (Flexible Friendship Wishes)

Ink - Memento Tuxedo black and Danube blue, Versamark

Color - Copics & Multiliner.

Accessories - Clear embossing powder, White embossing powder, Spellbinders Circle Nestabilities, Pennies, Foam tape

And when Football (Soccer) Season begins so do the themed cards!

I make no apologies for my blogging - life is too short!  What I will do is warn you that I have a lot of soccer/football cards of a similar ilk coming up.  Hey! I'm an if it ain't broke don't fix it sort of gal.  What I think is good about sharing this is that you will see how I changed things slightly with no two cards exactly alike (the SCS spinner card use is prominent) even though the theme is the same.

This card was for one of our favourite uncle's who is celebrating his 80th birthday and used to be a Reading FC season ticket holder.  Unfortunately he has had a few health problems and had to give up his season ticket a few seasons ago but I know he still supports them. 

The name "Uncle Manky" is a pet name from my husband, it stems from a family party where his uncle asked "Who's manky cat is that?" Well, that just tickled my husband's funny bone and ever since (20+ years) he has been "Uncle Manky".

Of course, I had to add a cat too just to remind him how he got the name!

That second cat.. well I will get to that another day.

Ingredients

Card size - 8.5 x 5.5 in

Paper - The Paper Source pack

Stamps - GinaK (Little Tees, Sporty Accessories), Just Rite Stampers (Shirt lettering & numbers), Clear Dollar Stamps (Simon the cat),  Stampendous (Flexible Friendship Wishes)

Ink - Memento Tuxedo black and Danube blue, Versamark

Color - Copics W1,W3, W5 and I can't remember the pink...

Accessories - Clear embossing powder, Spellbinders Circle Nestabilities, Pennies, Foam tape 

Just in case you are interested, I used the small round stamper with the medium sized font - it overhangs the outside but gives me the right curve for the shirts, I just go along and press down with my fingers to ensure the tops and/or bottoms of the letters get enough pressure to ink the paper.

I guess its hard to tell from the photo but I did my best to make it a Reading FC kit with the sleeve trim in blue and accent this with a blue ball.

A little help for a Happy Birthday

Thanks Joan at Paperlicious for the inspiration to create this card.  Joan has been such an overall inspiration to me about exploring life as a daughter, mother and crafter so please visit her blog generally - she has decided to be an occasional blogger and that works for me!  Yeah.  I bet you hadn't guessed that.  Anyway the link is directly to the card that inspired my creation and I hope you enjoy my interpretation.

I was absolutely at wits end on what sort of card to send to my nephew's girlfriend and I hope she liked this.  I thought it was "young" and maybe even "modern" but what do I know! LOL! 

Recipe

Card size - 8.5 in x 5.5 in

Cardstock - Neenah, Recollections, K&Co paper

Stamps - Stampendous, Just Rite Stamps

Ink - Memento

Color - Copics, Sakura (glitter, metallic, souffle - yep all of them!), American Craft white pen.

Accessories - Circle nestabilities, rhinestones, punch (unknown ATM) 

It's all about Zoe! and learning how to alter the collection I have amassed!

This is a whole gift set that I made to send to my neice for her 16th Birthday. I thought it turned out pretty cute. I got this We R Memorykeepers paper pack with purchase at Archivers and thought it was quite funky and youthful (which probably means it isn't - LOL). I know there is nothing "new" here to rock the blogging world but just a bit of sharing. I went to cover the letters and they are taller than my 6x6 paper so I thought I would embellish with ribbon at each end and in the middle of the "o". The ribbon "blossom" I have seen everywhere but didn't bother reading any instructions I just threaded ribbon folded on an angle on thread and tied it off and that is what I got. I went through my brad stash and liked how the brad echo'ed the dots in the paper and added a bit more whimsy. Then added some clear Michaels "dew drops" for a little bit of bling and edged each letter with white grosgrain ribbon to finish the edges, which was probably the most difficult part.

On to the next part of the gift - notecards! I liked mixing it up with the paper selection and the DCWV cards I had picked up in one of the Michael's sales ages ago. With my Nestabilies, my Palette ink pad and my JustRite Stampers I think they came out pretty cute. So just bear with my proud mamma moment...
And then there is this one! I think I frugally love it the best because I just used the ends that I cut off from all of the cards above to make it!

Then I was stumped! Yikes - I need to package these. How about a cute ribbon. No. That didn't work. It looked sloppy and it might come undone on its trans-Atlantic journey. What can I do? I will have to make a box of some sort. So I got out my Scor-pal and played.



oh wait!
There is something more!

I can't fool you - you saw them above didn't you?

I had to throw in some beaded pens. This time I put the patterned paper inside the pens and covered the pens with microbeads and then sealed them with Glossy Accents. I forgot to tell her the pens are refillable so I will have to let her know and that she can put other patterned paper in them because of how I did them.
Then I just had to have a go at a mini mailbox - perfect to send a few post-it notes

I would have loved to put some stamps in the mail box but she is overseas so that wouldn't really work. I also added loads of fun school supplies. She is planning on training to be a Nursery school/Pre-school teacher so I hope all the little fun supplies will come in handy with her school work or just be whimsical play for her.

I think these are the first set of alterables I have done so I'm pretty pleased with them - hope you like.

And thanks for the previous comments - I do my blog to keep my friends (past, present and future) up to date with my hobby, but its always nice when someone likes something and tells me! I really need to make more effort to leave some blog love!

Hopefully the ingredient list for this is pretty straightforward so I won't bother with this post.

Goat Old Dad!

In my defence my husband started it!

Here's the background - my husband on our weekly drive to our family's martial arts class says to me that I'm not bad for an "ol goat". I replied "oh you are soooooooooo not going to get away with that!" "I have a plan!"

He looked worried. RESULT!

Thus, the cobwebs in the cogs of my mind were blown away to accumulate another day!

Here's what I came up with - trousers inspired by Rupert Bear because he used to love Rupert Bear as a child.

In case you can't read it, it says - "DAD we aren't kidding, you're a great ol goat."

The Ol Goat and the greeting are popped up on 3-D zots - IRL it is quite dimensional. The kids are flat mounted on the card base. I think this card layout is a bit outside the box but works for a few reasons. All the images are related. There is also a three rule going on. Two images popped, one back. Two panels horizontal one vertical. Colors repeating. Offset images with the straight lines to make it visually interesting yet you get the importance of the Ol Goat with relationship to the kids. Hope you like it.

Ingredients

• card size - 8.5in x 5.5in
• cardstock - The Paper Source base, blue and red; Neenah Solar White
• Stamps - JustRite Stamps, High Hopes Stamps
• Ink - Memento Tuxedo black, Danube Blue
• Copics - Old Goat - 0, W1, W3, W5, W7, B00, BG01, BG05, E35, E37, R27, R29, Y11,Y15, YR04
• Copics - Kids- 0, C1, C3, C5, W1, W3, W5, W7, B00, BG01, BG05, G00, G14, G17, E33, E35, E37, R27, R29, Y11, Y15,

Not many differences but they are there.

I blend my backgrounds with 0 quite a bit - I just purchased B000 so I can't wait to see if that will make a different in how much I use my blender pen.

Still in Training?

This card is for a dear uncle's 70th birthday and he loves trains!

I really like the result I got on this project with my Cricut.

I decided that I would do a "free-standing pop up" card from SCS resources I had to adjust the measurements as I do "big" cards as in 8.5x 5.5 finished. I wanted to keep it cheerful so hopefully it is with the pearlescent blue cardstock and ink.

Then I had the hurdle of trying to work in Cricut Design Studio. I eventually managed to get a "welded" blackout 70 and a layer from my Printing 101 cartridge. Then I found two backgrounds on my Plantin cartridge for the borders at the bottom one is a city scape and the other is a treeline. I cut out a train from the My Community cartridge to use the negative as a stencil. The train border at the very bottom is Martha Stewart punch.

The greeting and repeat pattern on the card itself is from JustRiteStampers.

I really hope our dear uncle likes his card AND gets it on time with the international post that can be fun!

Critical Eye
when it is folded you can see the "and still in training" in retrospect that would have been a nice surprise when all folded down if I had stamped it lower. AND I had planned to emboss the blue "70" for some texture. Hopefully I will remember this for next time.

Ingredients

• Final Cardsize - 8.5 x 5.5 in - the panel is 8.5 x 4.5
• Cartridges used - Plantin, Printing 101, My Community
• Cardstock - Hobby Lobby, Wassau (that's pearlescent blue) and Georgia Pacific
• Ink - Brilliance
• Stamps - JustRite
• Punch - Martha Stewart
  

ETA - got an email from our uncle and he got it in time!!!!!

Wooly thanks....

I have posted this card in my gallery on SCS from a quick scan. However I thought I would come to my blog and do it properly.

The image stamps are from Clear Dollar Stamps and when I got the little sheep with my last order I just knew that these two sets had to be combined! Maybe it was living in England all those years and seeing sheep in the field with random markings. I don't know but I think it is one of those kinda funny things maybe its punny. I keep thinking, is this what they mean by "pre-dyed" wool?

The sheep stamp is a single (as you can just get a glimpse of inside the card) so I had to make about four masks of her to get this effect.

I do like the mottled effect of the sentiment though I know some people wouldn't. It reminds me a bit of the texture of knitting.

Critical eye - I think if I did this card again I would spell "wooly" as "woolly" - I looked it up and both are correct but the double "ll" is more correct. Also I would have the bottom of the feet of the sheep on the same level as the bottom of the basket. I would have put an insert in the card for the little grey sheep to be on - because as we know copic colors bleed through.

Copic lowdown - I know I don't have a list of Copic colors for this one as I actually made it before the fairy card. What I do remember is that the colors are pretty low numbers 00's, 10's and 20's for the most part, and the basket is mostly numbers in E 30's.

Ingredients

• Cardsize - 4.25 x 5.5 in
• Stamps - Clear Dollar Stamps, JustRiteStampers
• Cardstock - DCWV premade base card, Georgia pacific, Hobby Lobby black c/s
• Ink - Palette
• Color - Copics
• Tools - Nestabilities
• Techniques - Stamping, Masking