Mother's Day

I simply adore this Mother's Day card, however, I cannot lay claim to the gorgeous design. This design is by the incredibly talented Angie Brown from Stampin' Dreams. I loved it from the second I saw it and knew it would be perfect for my Mum for Mother's Day. It also has a lot of elements to it and not a lot of stamping.

The main differences between my card and Angie's are that I didn't have the same sentiment stamp as Angie so I lowered the placement of the bird and branches, and popped my sentiment up on the modern label punch out (my fave!). Also my white embossing powder was clumpy so I chucked it out (it was useless) and as a result I don't have that pretty detail on the bird's wing. I used plain old Versamark instead.

Here's the procedure:

Materials:
Cardstock: Shimmery White, Bashful Blue, Night of Navy. You could use Whisper White but the Shimmery White is much thicker cardstock and I feel it makes for a sturdier base card.
Inks: Bashful Blue ink spot, Night of Navy ink spot, Versamark.
Stamps: Vintage Vogue, Teeny Tiny Sentiments.
Other: Big shot machine, Top note die, Whisper White satin ribbon, Modern Label Punch, Bird punch, sponge, stick on pearls, retired triple flower punch, dimensionals, 2 way glue pen.
Non Stampin' Up: Polka dots embossing folder by Cuttlebug, black permanent marker.

Tips and tricks:
1. I sponged around the edges of the top note die cut, bird body and modern label punch out piece using Bashful Blue ink.
2. I punched 7 branches out of Night of Navy cardstock using the bird punch. I trimmed them to fit the way I wanted and glued them down with the 2 way glue pen.
3. I coloured a basic pearl with black permanent marker to create the bird's eye.
4. I've mentioned it before, the satin ribbon frays as soon as you look at it so handle it as little as possible.
5. I used Night of Navy ink to stamp the sentiment. I didn't think Bashful Blue was powerful enough.

Stuff Ups:
1. As I said, I was planning to emboss the stamping on the bird's wing in white and then sponge over it with Bashful Blue but my embossing powder was clumpy and no good. It wouldn't stick properly to the Versamark.
2. The Polka dot embossing folder was a little too small for the layer size that I wanted so one end is a little bit sparse with dots.
3. My SNAIL adhesive is really hard to use. It just doesn't want to turn and it is starting to dent my cardstock. It's very disappointing. I also left my back up double sided tape at work so I had to use my precious mini glue dots on the back of the polka dot embossed layer. Using tape rollers can flatten your embossing so it's always best to use peel-the-backing-off it tape (known as Sticky Strip in the Stampin' Up world).
4. My layers are always skewiff, never proportional.

Christmas Eve and Birthday Cards

Yes, it's Christmas Eve and I've spent most of the day making birthday cards for rellies I'm going to see tomorrow who have birthdays in the next couple of weeks. I'm pretty pleased with the results (except for that off centre brad). Here's the first card:

Rating: Decent

First of all, this design isn't mine - I cased a much more attractive card from Card Scraps Blog and wish mine looked like that! So what's different? I don't have any Soft Suede card stock so I used Crumb Cake and crumb cake ink. I spritzed the Crumb Cake layer with Perfect Pearls Mist in Heirloom Gold (omg I love this shimmer spritz) which the photo doesn't really show. It's a gorgeous golden glimmer that I could stare at for hours. I have used a different sentiment stamp. My card has gold brads for the small flower centres and a purple jewel brad in the centre of the big flower.

Here's another I made today using Concord Crush instead of Rich Razzleberry, simply because I ran out.

Here are the details:

Materials:

Cardstock: Rich Razzleberry or Concord Crush, Crumb Cake, Whisper White.

Inks: Rich Razzleberry or Concord Crush, Crumb Cake, Always Artichoke.

Stamps: Vintage Vogue.

Other: Gold brads, dimensionals, sponge.

Non Stampin' Up: Perfect Pearls Mists in Heirloom Gold, American Crafts Elements - medium jewel brads: brights, Wendy Irving Collections: Expressions Clear Cling Stamps -  'Occasions'.

Tips and Hints:

1. I have sponged the edges of the Whisper White card with Crumb Cake ink.

2. The lighter coloured flowers are created by using the 'stamp off' technique which is simply stamping the image on scrap card once or twice before stamping on the finished piece, so you get a lighter colour effect. I stamped off once for the medium colour and stamped off twice for the lightest colour.

Stuff Ups:

The border stamping: too lazy to use a stampamajig so some of the images are a bit crooked.

The off centre brad - it stares at me like a wart on a witches nose.

The cover up - I smudged a bit of ink on the Razzleberry card above the birthday wishes stamp so I covered it with another flower.