..and so this was Christmas ...

... and now it's all over for another year.  Reminder to self "I must start Christmas cards earlier next year, I must start Christmas cards earlier ...".

I did do some cards early in December for our Christmas stitching night - mostly large tags, but forgot to take a photo as I was in a hurry to finish them.

I spent (wasted ??) an inordinate amount of time just trying to decide on the design for the majority of my Christmas cards - the ones that were to be mailed to family and friends both here and in England.  Those cards needed to be "mail" friendly so this was the design I made.  I cased this from a card I saw at a paper show a few months ago, so not an original idea, but I liked it at the time and bought the necessary bits, ie. silver stamp pad, stickles etc.  The tree stamp used is a Penny Black "snow dust" and the words are also Penny Black "a wonderful Christmas".

Not the best of photos but here is a close up of all that glitter.

and here it is on the production line along with my other card which is not at all mail friendly and so only hand deliverable. 

The other card is a lovely little folded number which features Dasher from Stampin Up - just love him!  I got the idea of the folded card from Sandi's blog and then had to decide what to put on the front.  Dasher only just fitted.  In retrospect I should have made the card a bit bigger.  Isn't hind sight a wonderful thing?

The designer paper is also from Stampin Up but it is from last year - and it looks so good with the Real Red.

Again, I had a production line happening for these.  Stamped my greetings on the reverse with the white kraft ink.

and just to keep it all matching, I used Dasher again for my gift tags, along with the new SU Finial Press embossing folder - believe me it looks fabulous on the real red but you can't see it from my photo.  

 I was pretty happy with them, but as I said earlier, I just need to start much sooner next year, so I can enjoy the process.

Back in November my Brother had a gift of chocolates delivered to me.  They were from "Lollypotz" and were a novel idea with Ferrero Rocher chocolates wrapped in tissue and wired into a little bucket to look like a pot of flowers.  They have been sitting on my bench since then because I knew I just had to have a go at doing something like it.  I bought a kilo of Heritage chocolate bells and this is what I came up with.

I have made five of these now and while I don't think the other company is likely to be worried about my competition, I think they turned out well.  They are quite time comsuming because everything has to be wired (not good on the fingers!) (and this is why they are so expensive to purchase). 

I was determined to make a banner for Christmas !!! but I didn't get around to the one in my head because I needed to do something for our "front door decoration competition".  Obviously a normal banner wasn't going to fit across my front door so I made this funny little one .  I reversed the pennant shape into a tree shape and just went with "Ho Ho Ho", but I should have made it a lot bigger as it didn't have the same impact as a banner.



So that's about my lot for now.  Thanks to all of you who have made it to the end of this posting.  I will be much briefer next time.

I wish all of you a very happy 2011 - may it bring you good health and happiness and lots of paper crafting.

Cheers,

Mary

Thanks

The majority of Australians don't celebrate Thanksgiving, but my Daughter's friend was born in America and so they always do.  This year I made a banner for them.  Yes, I know I have the banner bug, but I do find them a lot of fun.

Evidently it fitted perfectly across their mantlepiece and is still up on show now, so I guess they liked it.

The next card I want to show you was a request from a friend and she gave me the lovely little centrepiece that she wanted on it.  I had bought that lovely striped paper a few weeks beforehand and had it on the floor with my Christmas papers and it just jumped up at me.  Once I had chosen the background paper, the layering seemed perfect.

so now on to the Christmas bits and pieces.

Mary

Halloween Banner

I started to make this Halloween banner for the children but needed to fly out to Darwin in the middle of doing it.  I finished it off and I guess it will be ready for next year.

Mary

A mixed bundle

I am so far behind in posting that I am not sure where to start - at the beginning is always good but I am not sure where the beginning was !!!  A lot of cards went out without a photo because I was busy catching up on birthdays and banners, but here is what I have a record of.

Back in October I made a card as a thank you for the lady who always picks up the books for the book club group.  A friend gives me the old daily pages from the beautiful calendar she receives from America (don't know the name but sometimes the initials ME are stamped on the images) so I had the perfect sentiment to use.

I loved this one when it was done.  Maybe it is all that lovely red!!

The next one was a birthday card for the friend who supplies the calendar pages so I used one on her card too.

As you can see I was still in red mode !!

The daughter of dear friends has received her first posting as a school teacher, so that was a milestone that had to be recorded:

Birthday cards for twins turning one:

 but unfortunately I spelt Lily's name incorrectly !!! 

I have used this simple card for a few of the male birthdays recently:

and this last card is for  my great niece who wants to be a pastry chef:



Happy Birthday Dana!

So that's about it for the cards I have made, but I want to show you this lovely card I received from a very dear stitching friend:

this photo doesn't do it justice - the very fine gauze/silk of the flower and the lace on the card have been dyed to give it a wonderful vintage look, and the edges are stitched as well.  Thank you Chrissie.

Congratulations and thank you, if you are still with me after this long post.

Mary

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

I am a very long way behind in my postings but thought I would just pop this one in quickly so that at least it will be on time.

I know it's a funny picture, but it was really hard to photograph.  I propped it up in the garden but then the photo was too small so I have just had a quick play with GIMP and this is probably as good as I am going to get.

I'll be back soon with a few other bits and pieces.

Mary

A trivial hobby

We held a trivia night and I decided to make a banner for the event.  I have to say I quite enjoyed all the fiddling with it, and my SU Owl punch arrived in time for me to use some of them across the top.

I have used the Outlaw designer papers from SU.  I cut out my own letters and used a variety of glitters etc to tizz it up a bit.

As usual I am disappointed with my photographs as this does look much better in real life. 

I am now busy working on another banner for Halloween and have promised to do one for Thanksgiving.

  

And finally, I teamed the Two Step Bird punch with the top note die for this little card.

Mary

Happy Birthday in Razzleberry

I know I seem to be stuck on Razzleberry lately but this one is probably the last for a while.  A bit of a collage for a stitching friend's birthday.  I was able to match the material to the card and then I very tentatively put it through the cuttlebug with the top note die - no problems, it cut through beautifully.

Cheers,

Mary

Return of the Razzleberry

I promised I'd be back with a card to match the razzleberry acceptance card I made. 

Today was the "Open House Afternoon Tea" to celebrate this special 70th Birthday, so I can now show you the matching stair step card. 

The flower stamp is from the SU Fifth Avenue set and it makes lovely crisp images which are so easy to cut out.  The card stock is Whisper White and of course, Razzleberry with some Razzleberry ribbon as well.  The SU bird punch is so handy for making leaves.

I haven't actually made a bird card with it yet. 

I will have another Razzleberry card to show you next time then I promise I will move on to another colour.

Cheers
Mary

Forty fabulous flutterbys

Flutter by butterfly

Floating flower in the sky

Kiss me with your petal wings

Whisper secrets, tell of spring

As soon as I saw these butterflies I knew what I was going to do for a special 40th birthday card.  When I started cutting them out I was a bit doubtful as to whether I could fit 40 of them on one card, but I did. 

I used my favourite stair step card which always look great for special birthdays.  The card stock is SU  confetti white and I stamped it in gold with the Vintage wheel.

It was getting rather crowded so I used three wires and adhered seven (double sided) tiny butterflies onto each stem which took up 21 then 9 medium sized and 10 large and the one extra large one on a wire at the top.

You can probably just see one of the wires at the top of the card here.  I just adhered them at one end and then bent the wires so they would go where I wanted, but would still be floating free.

I then made a belly band for the envelope the gift voucher was in, and just tucked the right side of the card under the belly band by about 3 cm.  It looked great.

So altogether I cut out 64 butterflies ! 

Wouldn't want to do that every day but I think it was worth the effort.

I'll be back soon with another stair step card.

Mary

Riot of Razzleberry

I was so pleased with the music card shown on my last post that I did another one very similar a few days later to use as a Thank You card.  However, looking at that post now makes me realise how poor my photography skills are.  I am trying to take more care with my photos but I have a long way to go because as you will notice I was so anxious to take these in good light that I just plonked them on the carpet !!!  lol  oh well, at least I remembered to take a photo before I gave them away.

Lately my photos are being turned around when I load them here, so I went into GIMP and fiddled a bit (a LOT) and at least I now have them the right way around and a bonus was that I found out how to crop them a bit, but have just realised that the cropped area still appears on the blog as white space, so one step forward and two back.  It looks fine on the preview but not on the blog!

...... this was a birthday acceptance card .....

..this one a Birthday card......

 ... and this one a birthday card for my Mum ....

... and just look at the matching gift wrap which I found in my cupboard after making the card .. how amazing is that?

Hope you liked my first play with Razzleberry.  It is a gorgeous colour.  The stamp was from SU Fifth Avenue set.  The card stock was all SU and the pearls from my stash.

Cheers

Mary

"If music be the food of love ..."

This card may have just awakened my motivation.  I have been using cards from my stockpile for a while now but this particular birthday required something different.  I sat down to make it on a couple of occasions but nothing happened and then suddenly I only had a couple of hours to get it done and delivered.  I knew that I wanted to try the metal foil in the cuttlebug with the music folder.  I had visualised a long landscape card with the music going across it on an angle, but of course the embossing folder is not the right shape for that ( perhaps I need SU music wheel !!).  I started with a large square card (145cm) and had chosen about six papers with a music theme which I thought would be perfect, but were in fact, too much, but this lovely paper was on the reverse of one of them and was just right.  I did have to cut the embossed image down and had to be careful to put it right way up as I can't read music.(hope I got it right).

I tried to "age" it a bit by sponging the edges, tearing and rolling the corners.  The words are computer generated, and I just had enough of the string left to tie it up.

I was quite happy with it. 

Just lately some card makers have started showing the inside of their cards which are decorated to match the front, but I have always made a conventional insert for all of my cards which I then just add something - maybe just sponging the edges or using a decorative punch on the corners - and this one is no exception.

Although  I recently received my order from the SU Mini, it is mostly untouched.  I do have however, a very large wish list of products in the new catalogue, so I need to get back to making lots of cards so I can justify my purchases.
Cheers,
Mary

Pretty Princess (in triplicate)

Pink, princess and of course, pretty - that was the request for a certain soon-to-be-6 young lady.  How easy is that when you have SU Pretty Princess stamp set?  I have used this set a few times now and wanted to do something a little different so I opted for a different shape of card.  I can't believe how long it took me to work out the final design but here it is:

Having used the scallop punch on the edges I then had to add a layer of the rose red on the inside to show off the scallops and it also required a different insert as well.

By the time I had finished fiddling with this one my patience had worn off so the next two 'spare' princesses got a somewhat basic finish:

 

I have used Pretty in Pink and Rose Red card stock and used the marker pens for colouring the images.

I had a go at making the man's shirt that I saw on "Dawn's Stamping Thoughts" - that was a bit of fun and may be handy for Fathers' Day.  designer paper is "Outlaw" from SU.

Now believe it or not this next card was not for a child !!  If I have a gift for someone I try to make a matching card.  I had a set of measuring cups in the shape of Matryoshka dolls for a friend, so this Hero Arts stamp set was the obvious way to go.

Why could I not see that sticky strip under the ribbon before I gave it away ???

That's about my lot for today - hopefully I will get time to play with my new Top Note die and the Bird Punch today.

Mary

Hearts and butterflies

I'm afraid my family tree research has taken over my life - I just can't put it down so that is where I have been this last month.

I wanted to show you this really cute wedding card (well, I think it is cute).  It is not an original idea of mine - I saw a card some time ago on the blogs, thought it was cute, but did not need a wedding card so didn't bother to take note of where it was - Murphy's law !!  I just remembered that it was done with the heart punch, which I don't have, so I had to cut a template. 

Now, this photo WAS the right way around but it REFUSES to post correctly so I am sorry about that.  I wasn't sure about doing a black and white wedding card but I think  it looks good.

The only other 'new' card I have is this one.  I know I have done others but I guess they went out without a photo.

I love the shape of the Top Note from SU and have been cutting them from a template for ages.  They look terrific for this type of 'patchwork' card.  I would like to get the Top Note die but I want to find out if they can be used in a cuttlebug. 

I have had a huge wish list for the mini catalogue since it came out but just haven't gotten around to it yet.  Need to move on that before the new book comes out and things are deleted.

Cheers for now,

Mary

The big Four O !!

I can now show you what I made for my Daughter's 40th Birthday, and yes, red is her favourite colour!

 I didn't realise I had cut off the top of the card (my photography skills are pretty minimal).  The papers are metallic and the flash has made them look yellow when they are actually very white.

The following begins as a book,

 and then the concertina pages ...... 

...lift out ..........

....... to become ......

...a banner ....

  ....... like this!

Here is photo of the banner on the wall at the venue.

Then the guests all sign the pages to commemorate the event.  Of course, in the midst of the festivities you have to remember to take the banner down to get it signed before everyone goes home !!!!  lol

Thought I'd show you the magnificent cake ... and it tasted as good as it looks.

Another memory for the scrapbook.

Mary