365 Cards - Day 17 - Three buttons, three bows

It's amazing how tough this one was to do.... I left it at the time, and looked at the ten's of entries and left it again.  Then I had a look at the last button & bow card I did, and decided to scale it down and use 3 'blossoms'  And am thrilled how it turned out!

Card is that Dutch manufacturer again, various ribbons and sewing threads.

365 Cards - Day 305 - Quarters

Tricky challenge this, to quarter your card and have, one in each quarter, a punched shape, a floral embellishment, a stamped sentiment and a rhinestone. Which I didn't quite manage, as I've only got one punch (snowflake) and no rhinestones. So mine is 3 pearly bits, fussy cut dragonfly (instead of punch) then the floral embellishment and stamped sentiment instead. It's not cheating if there's no alternative chortle!

365 Cards - Day 14 - DIY Flower

I followed the blog instructions on making a ribbon flower, twice. The first time I did running stitch on the selvedge edges (it's so wide it needed doubling over) and it was very stiff, so I unpicked it and did it down the centre line instead. It's a bit 'high' dimensionally but looks ok I think. The ribbon is blue/pink warp/weft so the colour changes with the light.

Mounted on sugar paper, with CraftWork Cards Card Candy (Truffles) fake brads, and the sentiment in black ink with silver embossing on top to tone it down a bit in line with the Card Candy.

365 Cards - Day 265 - One Paper, One Embellishment, One Sentiment

I was a bit stuck looking at this piece of paper, I like the design, the colour I can live with, but it didn't really go with any of the other papers. So, I decided to make the whole card out of the paper - which gives me the one paper, the one embellishment is the same paper plus a button, with a single sentiment. I am stunned that it turned out so well! If slightly muddy looking in the pic...

And this is the final card in my mammoth catchup session of Christmas Eve.

Although I'm still behind having only done 76 out of the 301 challenges so far. All I can say is I'm so thankful I'm unemployed as I might just manage to catchup by the end, although with only 64 days to go, maybe not! Still only 225 cards to go as at today, how hard can that be!!! (eeek!)

365 Cards Day 3 Button Ribbon Flower

Right so, I'm taking catching up to ridiculously extreeme highs (or is that lows) - this challenge is from earch March... in fact the third day of the Blog Challenges (yes I'd fallen behind that early on!) And was to have a ribbon, a flower and a button on the card, or possibly a bow instead of the flower due to some initial confusion over instructions. I ended up going with all 4... And I'm really really pleased with it. I was trying to have a go at DT Gloria's famous crumpled edge flowers, but partly because I didn't actually look at them that closely and partly because I was actually watching a really good Hong Kong gangster film on BBCiPlayer (called Exiled - if you can get BBCiPlayer and missed it it's worth a watch - quite a lot of blood & gore but very elegant and a great storyline, but not for the fainthearted and not for children and available for another 6 days from today) they didn't turn out quite the same.....

I used Puffin Arts cardstock (some Dutch company) which is strong enough to make cards with so medium thickness, and messed around doing big circles with an embossing tool on the flower and radiating lines on the green leaf (yes the biggest light green circle is a leaf) over an upside down mouse mat. Probably not a kosher approach to embossing/ distressing - but it worked!

The button is out of my 'not sure if it's a replacement for clothes currently in my wardrobe' box, so I might regret using it at some stage. In fact I might go and check.... Anyway and some black linen thread that was already threaded through the needle I'd chosen in my needlecase. And the ribbons are a mix from the Crafty Ribbons bargain offcut pack, and other random ones that probably came off chocolate boxes...

It's 5"x7" and as ever no sentiment inside or anywhere else!

PS If anyone's having trouble with their ribbon stash DT Gloria has an amazing post on how she sorted hers out. I've followed it and now mine are all in one place, although I'm not brave enough to throw away ribbons under 1 foot long - unlike her!

365 Cards - Day 84 - Recipe #2

I'm not sure why but I always put a random extra vowel in the word recipe at the first attempt; lucky I checked the dictionary!

Today's recipe:
- one 3"x3" card - mine is 5"x5" because I don't have any that small and didn't want to cut one down.
- one flower - I made mine with 6 layers of yep you guessed it bargain Hobbycraft sugar paper
- one brad - a little orange one in the centre of the flower
- one ribbon - well it was one until I cut it in two
- one sentiment - from that Creative Expressions set that doesn't seem to have a name

the background paper, is yep you guessed right again, bargain Hobbycraft sugar paper:
and for a change the sentiment is in Versacolour Magenta (because for once Peony didn't look right, I tried, but no bananas)

365 Cards - Day 41 - Get Well with 5 Flowers

And the challenge is: a cheery get well card with 5 flowers.

I had some scraps left over from the crocuses printouts, so I used Hero Arts Kaleidoscope Wild Daisy to stamp the outline on the back of the paper, and cut them out of the scraps, using the final long thin scraps for borders.

So, that's 3 cards made out of one A4 sheet of Canford dark green paper (well 2 from that paper with some left over), and 3 sheets of crocus printoff. The other days' cards were Day 36 & Day 39.

A pleasingly thrifty result!

I don't think I'm actually going to use it as a get well card, so I didn't use a sentiment.