What? Flowers on a Soccer card? What am I thinking?

This card is for the wife of  Uncle Manky from my previous post... her season ticket was right beside his and I got to thinking that I bet she never got "sports" cards because they aren't very feminine.  So I challenged myself to make a feminine sports themed card.  I think I might have just succeeded too!  I decided that I wanted to use my gladiola stamps for the feminine touch alone with the tee shirt and ball... It came to me that the only time I have really ever seen this combination is on the washing line so thus "why" the shirt is on the washing line.  Hopefully in the make believe card world Auntie Gladys didn't have to wash and hang out her shirt to dry on her birthday!

I stamped, colored and embossed the shirt and ball just like I did for Uncle Manky.  I then stamped the gladiola multiple times masking off the butterfly in all but one of the repetitions and staggering the placement to look more natural.  After coloring them in with Copics, I used versamark and clear embossing powder to emboss them.  I used an airbrush to spray the sky (I think that is about the best sky I have done!) and more Copics to make some grass for the garden.  The clothes pegs are from another Clear Dollar Stamps set Hanging Out.  Although I didn't have movement with this design I wanted it to look like it could so I popped the ball and the bottom of the shirt up on dimensionals.  Do you think it makes the shirt look like the breeze has caught it?  As for the blue stripe background that was to mimic the hoops that are on the front of the Reading FC football kit and it does a nice job of tying everygthing together don't you think!

And though you can't see it if you saw my previous post you will know there is a little "manky cat" on the inside of this card too!

Ingredients

Card Size - 8.5 x 5.5 in

Cardstock & Paper - Neenah Solar White, The Paper Source (black cardstock & blue stripes).

Stamps - GinaK Designs (Little Tees, Sporty Accessories), Clear Dollar Stamps (August Flower of the month, Hanging Out),  Kitchen Sink Stamps (Whole Family), JustRiteStampers

Ink - Memento (Tuxedo Black), Versamark

Color - Copics

Accessories - clear embossing powder, airbrush, 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 Shower for Baby Dillon

So I think I have found my calling decorating for family baby showers.  We use karate studio for these functions as one of my uncles runs a karate dojo and is kind enough to let us use it.  It is a great open space but some times it needs something to be a bit more homey.  I do my best to decorate it to keep my mama cousins happy.

I asked my aunt if she wanted me to decorate a bit for the shower and if anyone was doing a "diaper cake".  I did my now traditional (I guess two showers makes a tradition) baby block baby name.  This time I used two tones of blue as I didn't have enough of either to do the name in full.  I try to do these things out of my more than ample stash!  I'm sure no other paper crafter has these issue having so much cardstock around.  Anyway, I think they are a great hit and fairly easy to do with my electronic die cutting machine.

As my policy to be completely honest about these things you will see with the decorations that are hanging there is a cute not so little umbrella in the center. I have to be honest that I attempted to make a mobile but the string the vines and animals were just too heavy for the cardstock umbrella, so I deconstructed it and used them separately. My wonderful son hung them from the soffet for me and did an excellent job staggering the heights (those animals have fronts and backs decorated). There is an elephant at the far end in case you are wondering - I did the best I could but the shower was staring at this point. LOL!

Alas, the diaper cake. I can't take all the credit. I had my mother roll the diapers. We kept them rolled with clothes pegs and then we put rubber bands around the "layers" and covered the layers with a couple of layers of freezer paper. I then lined some ribbon I had on hand with some double sided tape and placed it around the middle of the layers. The ribbon at the bottom of the layers is wired. Don't you just love that bow! I placed the animals all around to decorate it.

 

Now you are going to have to forgive me for a moment for sending you back up to the first picture to see that giraffe and then point out the one on the cake. Yes that giraffe on with the building blocks is nearly 2 feet tall - just how fun is that! And on the cake what about that double sided monkey on top?!  He is "attached" to a wooden skewer that I fed through the gaps in the layers.  Acutally I fed about three skewers through to help it all hold together.  Did you notice the all the vines on the mirror? There are loads - they are to cover the joins between the mirrors - my uncle even said they could stay up by my cousin wanted them for her baby book.

I enjoyed making these decorations so much but I'm not going to lie there are a lot of decorations and they took me 3 8+ hour sessions to complete and a few heartbreaking attempts that failed. And it definitely is not the "cheap" option. I'm not even going to add up the supplies because the joy I got from doing some special for my cousin was worth it. Thanks for looking.

Apologies for some of the "coding" making the page a bit wonky - I have done my best to clear it up.

Baby Shower crafted gifts - Clothes Dividers

So I told my aunt that I would help decorate for my cousin's shower. My cousin is having a boy and has a jungle animal theme for her baby accessories. I happened across this tutorial http://adreatravis2008.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-second-video.html and just had to make these part of my gift to her.  Please visit the tutorial and leave some appreciation if you like this project.
I used fun foam for the ovals and cut them out on my die cutting machine as I wanted a larger size than the nestabilities I have. I picked colors that went along with the scheme and mostly replicated animals similar to her sets and added a couple more - the bird and the frog.

I decided to use some twine I had for more of a jungle/rustic feel. Did you see how the chick is in an oval (or is it an egg)? And because I had two monkeys I thought they needed to be the next size.

With the cutting I had to re trim the ovals as the fun foam had a bit of a perforated look even using the deep blade housing and a very slow cutting speed.

What I did different from my inspiration is that I used twine instead of ribbon, and I made the oval the entire mat for the piece without having rectangles hanging down as I thought they would be easily damaged. I wanted this to be about making new mom's life easier.

Generally I went with the normal animal sizes for the order. The exception is the frog and I just thought he needed to be on "water" blue!

Truthfully it was a fun project with great impact that the mommy to be loved (once I explained what they are! LOL). All the printing was done on the computer onto card stock.

Apologies for the picture sizes. I didn't want the post to scroll forever just repeating the same project but different color and animal but still wanted to share them all with you.

I was trying to work out how to do some groovy things in my photo editing software and starting losing the will to share so when plain and simple. 

IngredientsFun Foam
Card stock
Cricut Create a Critter
Spellbinders Rectangle Nestabilities
Eyelets
Twine

 

Oopsie "Baby on Board" a little more to the right please.

 This card is fairly CAS in my opinion, but then again what do I know!

In the spirit of telling you the ups the downs and the all arounds this isn't exactly the card I was going to make... I had this vision of a single popped layer with airbrushed shading around the image.  All went well until the mask wanted to permanently attach itself to the t-shirt on the oval.  Sheesh! I'm a time limit here.  Did I forget to say the car was packed and ready to go to the baby shower for set up and everyone was waiting for me!...oh I did? Well the car was packed and I guess you get the idea.  Quickly I decide that there is no saving it.  I stamped another t-shirt and promptly got the letter skewed.  ACK! oh no... I'm just going to have to go with it at this point.  So I color it and mount it and pray that all the decorations and paper gifts I made for her will make up for my skewed "Baby on board".  And yes I will start sharing those with you my next post... I probably will divide it over a few posts in case anyone is inspired by my humble little creations.  Thanks for looking and sharing in my oops!

Ingredients
Card size - 4.25 in x 5.5 in
Cardstock - Neenah
Stamps - GinaKDesigns
Ink - Memento
Color - Copics
Dies - Spellbinders
Techniques - Airbrushing, Dimensional layering, Masking, dry embossing

From your favorite Aliens...

When you have a dear friend that is a plane buff and pilot you can get some pretty interesting conversations late at night and one of them was if they had ever seen a UFO...

Of course a UFO only means the flying object was unidentified.  Right? LOL!  So logically the way my mind works when it came time to make a birthday card for our friend I had to play on this conversation.  We are definitely a bunch of goofballs so I'm sure it really wasn't any surprise for our friend to receive such a silly card.



So do you think this is Out of this World?  I won't pretend it is a piece of art but I do like how it all turned out.  And yes, I do see that bit of marker bleeding at the bottom.  I got ready to spend loads and loads of time and effort trying to eliminate it and then realized that a nice shiney flying saucer would reflect the sky around it.  That's my excuse and I am sticking with it!

TBH I'm particularly proud of remembering to put a bit of pink in the space.  Though honestly I could have spaced the Aliens better.  A fun set from Clear Dollar Stamps that I can't wait to find an excuse to use again.

Ingredients

Card size - 8.5in x 5.5 in

Cardstock - Neenah

Stamps - Clear Dollar Stamps

Ink - Memento

Color - Copics

Other - Embossing (yeah there are some twinkly stars on there)

Techniques - Stamping, Masking, Airbrushing.









A Very Dotty Happy 18th!

Can you tell we are absolutely dotty about our neice and she has a special birthday!  Well in England anyway.  They really celebrate 18th and/or 21st birthdays.  The 21st is more traditional but 18th is really popular too especially as they finish secondary school and don't really graduate like we do in the US (They do national exams and get their results a few months later).

I used a couple of Gina K Stamps sets for this.  I stamped the greeting on the white die cut circles with a rainbow of memento colors.  I then stamped the shirt with the lady bug red on scrap paper and before I cleaned it off I added some metallic Tsukineko ink to the stamp and stamped again to keep the color and add a metallic sheen to the lettering on the T shirt.  I cut out the shirt and put foam tape on it.  I then used my Spellbinders dies to cut out circles in both white and black.  I cut and adhered them together adding the shirt to the front and decorating with rhinestones.  Then I made the background layout and decided to go overboard with the dots theme and emboss the background which meant four passes through the folder and machine with some hand embossing to tease out the dots that get smashed in the sides of the folders.

Time to attach the image circle using some more foam tape and of course I just had to add the rainbow dotty ribbon I already had in my stash!  I don't know if it works or not but I like it.  What about you?

Ingredients

Card size -8.5 x 5.5 inches

Cardstock - Neenah, The Paper Source, Georgia Pacific

Stamps - Gina K - Just So Sporty & Little Tees

Ink - Memento, Tsukineko

Accessories - Embossing Folder, Die cuts, Ribbon, Crystals