Happy Birthday

I love the beautiful flowers in the Contemporary Design Elements set by Mujka Chic on MyGrafico and use them all the time! I paired the flower with leaves from the Hand Drawn Floral Stamps by Lil Ellaboudy on MyGrafico.



This is a card I've had in my head for a while now. The spotty background on the petals was originally what I had planned for this card, but decided to go with the beautifully textured Canson Mi-Teintes instead.

It's also another mostly digital card - everything was created and/or manipulated in PSPX2 except for the sentiment. I would have done that digitally too except I didn't think of having a sentiment until after I printed it and thought it needed something in the corner to balance it out. Now looking at it I think I could have stamped it a little bit further away from the corner... oh well.

The flower and leaves are paper pieced, not printed straight onto the frame as I love the dimension this brings!

I also used Glossy Accents to accent the middle bits of the flowers. It's my new favourite extra!

Size of card: 4" square

Supplies:
Card/paper - Quill white cardstock, Kodak matte photo card, Epson matte photo paper
Stamp - Contemporary Design Elements from Mujka Chic (MyGrafico), Hand Drawn Floral Stamps by Lil Ellaboudy (MyGrafico), Chic Jessica paper (spotted backgrounds) by Woofy World (MyGrafico), My Sentiments Exactly "Birthday Sentiments"
Ink - printer, Versacolor "Black"
Extra - Glossy Accents
Tools - Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner, scissors

Challenges: MyGrafico Challenge #67 - Paper Piecing / Caardvarks Clean & Simple Challenge / Wee Memories CAS challenge

Thanks for looking!

We'll Miss You and Good Luck!

I made these cards a few weeks ago for two of my lovely colleagues who left to go on to bigger and better things. Their last day was Friday (*sob*) and they received their cards so now I can post them.

I had to make these big so that everyone could write in them (they're 5" square), and I received quite a few compliments on how pretty the cards were, but I didn't tell many people I made them - I don't like to blow my own trumpet! Pretty silly I know.

So here they are:



Inside it says:



And here's a close up of the Black spica pen I used to accent the flowers:



Click on it to look at it a bit closer - it looks like gold dust! Pretty hey? :)

Size of card: 5" square

Supplies:
Card/paper - Quill white cardstock, Canson Mi-Teintes in Azure, Cream and Orchid
Stamp - Contemporary Design Elements from Mujka Chic (MyGrafico)
Ink - printer
Extra - "Black" Spica pen
Tools - Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner, scissors, Tombow mono multi liquid glue

And here is the second card - for a girl who loves green:



Inside it says:



The second card is completely digital, printed using matte photo card from Kodak. Everything prints so beautifully on it, but it isn't cheap so I save it for special projects :)

Size of card: 5" square

Supplies:
Card/paper - Quill white cardstock, Kodak matte photo card
Ink - printer
Stamps - Stylish Butterflies by Cheri Wenger (MyGrafico), Carolina paper (recoloured) by Lilly Bimble (MyGrafico)
Extra - Kaisercraft rhinestones - light green and silver
Tools - Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner

That's it from me for now - I hope everyone has a lovely crafty weekend! :)

Wishing you everything wonderful + free digital sentiment

Good evening! I've been busy making my entry for the latest Embellish magazine challenge:


Here is my entry:



I had a really hard time paper-piecing all of these leaves... it was painstaking and I think this was the 3rd attempt... if I'd had to start from scratch one more time I think I would have given up in disgust! The main trouble was adhering the little bitty leaves - I used my Tombow mono glue fine applicator for the bigger ones alright, but the glue would ooze out from under the smaller leaves, even though I used barely any. Very annoying! In the end I got a bamboo skewer and applied the glue VERY sparingly to the backs of the leaves with no further tearing out of the hair. Thank goodness!

The sentiment I used is another of my creations which I provide free below, for anyone who wishes to take it! The only thing I ask is that you give me credit and link back to this blog.


To save, right click on the above image and choose 'save target as...'.

Sentiment info:
File type: PNG (can be dropped into MS Word, background is transparent)
File size: 109kb
Full dimensions: 14cm x 8cm
Fonts: Gentium Basic and Windsong

All of my free digital sentiments can be found on the "Free Digital Sentiments" tab at the top of every page of this blog, or by clicking here. I'd love to hear from you if you use them! Please leave a comment or drop me an line: jess@lennonforever.net.

Size of card: 4 3/4" (120cm) square

Supplies:
Card/paper - Quill white cardstock, Epson matte photo paper, Bazzill "Capers", Stampin' Up (not sure what colour - was a sample), Lexel kraft paper
Ink - printer
Extra - Prismacolor pencil "Canary Yellow", Kaisercraft ribbon
Tools - Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner, Bigshot, Nestabilities (SM and LG circles), scissors, Tombow mono multi liquid glue

Happy Birthday

This is a bit of a joke card - a friend at work asked me to make a card from their cat to her husband for his birthday. I instantly thought of the gorgeous little Michu from Softpencil and had to use him again (I cut him out of this image).

Softpencil is actually having a sale at the moment - buy one image and get one free. Bargain!



Here's a closer look:



I paper pieced the kitty - but now thinking about it I didn't have to, I could have just printed it straight on to the layer that I have the 'Happy Birthday' on, but I always like doing things the hard way! I used the same digital paper that I used for Michu but in green to make grass... I love the little scene that it creates!

Looking at it today though, I think I should have put the sentiment down lower, just above the top of the grass, and Michu should have been standing a little bit below the top of the grass, but oh well, I can always make another one!

Oh and I used my favourite font - Pupcat - for the sentiment.

Size of card: 4" square

Supplies:
Card/paper - Quill white cardstock, Epson matte photo paper
Stamps - Michu by Softpencil, Chic Jessica by Woofy World at MyGrafico
Ink - printer
Extra - DMC thread
Tools - Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner, Papercraft foam dots, Canon Pixma printer, Scissors

Thanks for looking!

Cup Tags

These have been brewing in my mind for a while now (brewing, get it?!) and I've finally gone and made them, and they turned out great!

What are they? Well I don't know about anyone else, but I always have a hard time remembering how much sugar Mark's Mum has in her tea, or how many spoonfuls of coffee she likes. The same goes for any of our guests really. So I made little tags like these ages ago (just using a punch and writing with a white gel pen) and they have worked really well. I just thought recently that they needed a bit of jazzing up, so I made them up in Paint Shop Pro X2 and printed them out on recycled brown card for durability. I sprayed them with matte fixative as well to keep the ink from running in case there's a spill.



I've got a customisable set available in my Madeit shop if you would like a set of your own!

Thanks for looking :)

Happy Birthday

Here's another special request card I made recently - for my Mother-in-law to give to a grand-nephew who is turning 7.



Not having spent much time with boys of 7 I have NO idea what they like so I googled 'gifts for 7 year old boy'. Apparently they like cars, Ben 10 (whatever that is), Toy Story, trains, the list goes on! A quick phone call to my husband's Mum confirmed that the little boy likes cars, so I used one from the Boy Toys Elements set from Cupcake Cutiies along with a sentiment I typed in word using the Pupcat font (via Fontsquirrel).

Size of card: 4 1/2" square

Supplies:
Card/paper - Quill white cardstock, Rosie's 6x6 paper pad "Boys", Cre8tive textured cardstock, Lexel textured paper
Ink - printer
Tools - Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner, Canon Pixma printer, Scissors

Thanks for looking! Hope everyone is enjoying their weekends - I know I am!

Congratulations and 100 posts!

I can't believe this is my 100th post! Yay for me - I've never blogged this much about anything before!

I made a few cards this week by special request - two of which are baby shower cards that simply say 'Congratulations'.

One was to be unisex (sex unknown):



And because I lack originality I made the second card, for a girl, similar to the first:



I made the 'quilt' squares using my 1" punch. By gluing the squares down to a piece of cardstock matching the base card, I was able to line the squares up without worrying about the quilt sitting perfectly in the middle of the base. I then glued the quilt down to the base card once I was happy with it. I love to cheat in these little ways... it keeps me sane!

The faux stitching just makes these cards - they really look stitched to me. It was my first attempt too... Love it!

I printed out the sentiments using my printer as I don't have any "Congratulations" sentiments small like this (one of the main reasons I love going digital) using the "Blackjack" font. I used my fake word window technique to finish them off.

Size of cards: 4" square

Supplies:
Card/paper - Stampin' Up Very Vanilla (unisex card) Quill white cardstock (girl card), Kaisercraft Peek-a-Boo "New Born" and Kaisercraft Peek-a-Boo "Lullaby" (unisex card) Kaisercraft Child's Play "Hopscotch" (girl card)
Ink - printer
Tools - Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner, Sullivan's 1" square punch, Uniball Signo white gel pen, Canon Pixma printer, 5/8 circle (for fake word window)

Thanks for looking! Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Anenome Photo Puzzle

Try saying 'anenome' 5 times fast - I dare you! I actually have alot of trouble saying anything with 'm's and 'n's close together - like 'anonymity' or 'femininity'. My tongue just doesn't behave itself around those words!

I love the flower kind of anenome and earlier in the year I ordered a huge pile of bulbs from Tesselaars for my Mother-in-law to plant since she has a huge garden full of sun. I unfortunately have the poorest excuse for a little side garden so can't grow beautiful bulbs like she can, but luckily she shares the flowers with us so that we can take photos of them!

I've wanted to make a photo puzzle card as described on All in an Inch for a while (see the post I'm talking about here). As the current Embellish Magazine challenge is sponsored by Inchie Arts (and you have to use squares) I thought I would give the photo puzzle a go.

Here are the swatches:



And here is what I came up with:



The original flower wasn't true to the purple swatch, nor was the background to the green, so I 'shopped it. Here's the original photograph:



I enjoyed making this card, but I think the most fiddly thing was getting the black mats to measure correctly without the appropriate size punch. I think if I was going to make another photo puzzle I would invest in a 1 1/8" square punch.

Size of card: 4" square

Supplies:
Card/paper - Quill white cardstock, Canon matte photo paper
Extras - Kaisercraft grosgrain ribbon
Tools - Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner, Snow block, Sullivan's 1" square punch, papercraft foam dots

Challenge: Embellish Magazine - Use Squares

Thanks for looking!

I've been busy!

I just saw that I haven't posted in a week! I think that's a new record for me. I've been busy though. My patterned paper was a mess, I had about a zillion new ribbons to add to my ribbon ring, and I just needed to spend some time in my Craft Zone re-inventing my storage situation.

I've also been adding lots of items to my Madeit shop - including the paper flowers that I make, as well as little fabric flowers made out of scraps of material my MIL gave me.

I do have a card to share though:



And here's a view from the top to show that the butterfly does line up with the hole:



I found the bright stripy paper in my patterned paper stash while organising it. I grouped my Kaisercraft papers into collections and then grouped them by type (florals, vintage, masculine, etc) and I noticed that there were a few papers that didn't fit into any of the general categories - this paper included (Pina Colada - Swizzle Stick and Sugar Syrup. They aren't usually something I would buy anyway (who knows why I did - perhaps they were on sale?) so I'm going to try to use these up soon.

I do like sentiment-less cards - they were the type I always bought before I started making my own cards, but I rarely make any that don't have a sentiment on them! Go figure!

Size of card: C6, top folding

Supplies:
Card/paper - Quill white cardstock, Kaisercraft Pina Colada - Swizzle Stick and Sugar Syrup
Tools - Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner, Sullivans 1" circle punch, Carl 1 1/8" punch

Thanks for looking! Hope everyone has a lovely weekend ;)