I am often inspired by the wonderful Jennifer McGuire who comes up with the most beautiful creative ways to use dies, inks, stencils and other other goodies us crafters have in our stashes. I save ideas in Pinterest. I used one of my favourite ideas to make cards for my daughter and my crafty friend earlier this year. Follow this link for the youtube tutorial I used https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z288ItkNCOg although I feel I must add a warning, unless you’re very experienced this technique can be quite tricky. I was really pleased with my end results but found it much harder than it appears in the video despite having a good few years of crafting under my belt. The end result was definitely worth it. I used a number of dies including ‘Happy Birthday’ sentiment from Tattered Lace sentiments 2014 dies, ‘Daughter’ sentiment from 3 Die-mensions handbag die set, and layered flowers dies, Card Making Magic Die Set Solid Alphabet Letter by Christina Griffiths and ‘Friend’ sentiment from Creative expressions Sue Wilson Essentials – In the tool box die set.

It’s hard to make family cards, as I mentioned in my last post, the closer the relative, the harder it is to come up with something new. I made this for my daughter’s birthday in December of last year. I used some new dies that were bought specifically with her in mind as she’s a hospital doctor. It was kind of tricky to put them all together in a cohesive design but here it is, for better or worse, at least it’s original. The main die is a Tattered Lace die with a printed charisma image and the embellishments are an unbranded set of dies from ebay. I used one of my favourite card bases the block easel card (inspired by Sam Calcott) for this but in an 8″x8″ size to create a larger card. The card mat is cut using a gorgeous Paper Discovery die set – Card Builder Nested Squares. The blue background was embossed using a Tattered Lace Script embossing folder and inked with distress ink. I used Tattered Lace Hand Drawn Alphabet dies for the name and Paper Boutique sentiment dies.

I am one of four sisters, all of whom are crafters in one way or another. Three of us make cards and do various sewing, art and needle crafts whilst my youngest sister is an accomplished cake baker and decorator, furniture renovator, and makes various home decor/soft furnishing items ( there’s not a lot she can’t do). Their birthdays always need a little more thought when it comes to what card to make. They’ve all seen pretty much everything I’ve made so I often try out new ideas or new dies for their cards. In this instance it was neither a new idea or new dies, it was a new way of using an old idea. Regular visitors will recognise the base of this card as the baby keepsake parcel card only this time I created pockets and added tags and various stamped sentiments for a different take on a special birthday card hope you like it.

It seems that people are sending less Christmas cards these days, hardly surprising considering the costs of postage. I do have some regulars who want Special hand made cards. My best friend usually scours Pinterest for ideas of what she wants and has them all the same design, which makes my life easier during what is always a busy time. The first pics are made using an idea from Pinterest which, if you’re curious, you’ll find here; https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/555983516510989238/ The next three you’ll recognise if you read my previous post. I was asked, last minute for 3 special cards so used the same idea as the ones I made for my family members only this time didn’t use recycled cards for the backgrounds, instead I printed papers from the Hot Off The Press Vintage Christmas CD Rom for the backgrounds on card stock and a faded version on paper for the matching insert, I enhanced them with gem stones, stickles glitter and glossy accents. The final card is a grave card. I make a different one every year for my friend to take to the grave of her friends’ child. I use Craftartist professional software to create the card and then laminate it to ensure it’s weather proof.

If you read my last post you might remember my mentioning that I salvaged the fronts from some beautiful Christmas cards I received in 2021. I always make special cards for family members and I used the beautiful card fronts as backgrounds for my special family cards. I used 8″ square card blanks and unbranded nesting stitched octagon dies to cut the recycled card fronts into mats and layered them onto gold card mats. I basically made the same card design for all of the cards using the Sizzix Tim Holtz Jolly St Nick Thinlits dies, a set of unbranded stitched tags dies and Card Making Magic relatives sentiments dies. I switched out the colours to co-ordinate with the card background. I have two daughters and always make sure their cards are the same, luckily I received 2 identical cards so was able to continue as usual with a subtle difference in colours.

At Christmas 2021 I received some beautiful shop bought cards from friends and relatives and was a bit loath to throw them away after the holiday. Instead, I removed the card fronts in the hope that I could reuse/recycle them for the following year’s Christmas makes. I have a couple of very special friends and here are the cards I made them. The first one is using one of the afore mentioned card fronts salvaged from 2021. It was originally an expanding tunnel style card with multiple layers. I kept the layers but used foam pads to maintain the dimensional effect but fix the layers together. I used stitched rectangle dies to cut the mats and layers using gold card to complement the design and die cut the sentiments using the same gold card. The completed topper was then mounted onto a landscape A5 fold back card base. The second card was made for my crafty friend who lives in Ireland. We’ve never met in person but became friends through the Craftworld web site. We meet regularly via whatsapp video and often craft together. Taking it in turns to plan a card/project which we then make together. This was inspired by some ideas we’d seen on Pinterest from https://bluerosepapertreasures.blogspot.com/2020/08/ornate-poinsettia-cards.html though we’d each made our own versions I felt this was the most appropriate one to send to my friend. For details of dies etc used for these two cards follow this link to the Christmas Extra Special gallery and click on the thumbnail pic which should give you the full sized picture with all details beneath it.

This post is carrying on from where the last one left off with batch making cards. I have a number of people on my Christmas card list who celebrate the true meaning of Christmas and to whom I try to send an appropriate card. This batch used stamps form the Creative Stamping Magazine 100th issue free gift which was a fantastic set of Christmas stamps in 4 different themes, one of which was religious. I stamped and heat embossed the image and sentiment with silver embossing powder onto watercolour card and then water coloured the image using distress ink re inkers. I added some subtle sparkle using clear overlay sparkle pen from spectrum noir. The completed toppers were then mounted onto a silver mat then adhered to a folded back card base.

I recently realised that although I’d updated the galleries with my Christmas cards I hadn’t actually highlighted them in a post so here goes. This is the first instalment of batch made cards. I have been batch making my Christmas cards for a number of years now. Because of the numbers involved ( over 100 ), I try to keep the designs as simple and easy to reproduce as possible. I’m laughing as I write this as my first batch proved to be anything but simple, but they were such a lot of fun. I saw the stamp set Christmas Green Things Sprouts (CS250D) by Hobby Art Stamps and fell in love with the cute fun designs. There were loads of great examples using the stamps on the hobby Art web site. I decided not to go for a detailed background, I thought it would be a lot easier to leave it white. To save spoiling my cards blanks by making mistakes, I opted to avoid masking techniques and stamped three of the sprout designs out, numerous times, on sheets of card stock and heat embossed them with clear embossing powder. I used Tim Holtz distress re inkers in various shades of green to watercolour the images. I then added glossy accents to the eyes and noses. I stamped out the various sprout ‘toppings’ i.e. Santa hats, icing and holly etc onto card, heat embossed and water coloured those too adding glossy accents to finish off. I spent many an hour fussy cutting all the sprouts and toppings, whilst watching tv. I decided on my design layout and using my stamp press, I positioned the stamps for the sentiments, the sprout arms and legs and the fork where I wanted them to be on the card fronts. I marked where to place my card blanks so that they would all be exactly the same, then I stamped all of the card bases and heat embossed them. I water coloured the forks and the shoes and added glossy accents to the hands, feet and forks. I then glued the individual sprouts into place adding either a Santa hat or icing and holly. The 3 different sprouts and two different toppings gave me 6 different finished designs. I made 72 in total. They were great fun to make and were very well received. I have a few left over sprouts to play with this year too.

This is a simple but elegant card, the design of which was specially requested. My friend’s daughter and son wanted a special card which included photographs for their mum’s Fiftieth birthday. The design is a copy on one I made for my friend’s daughter to send to her best friend a few years ago. She specifically asked for the same design for her mum. I have to say it looked really lovely in white and rose gold. I changed the butterflies for a slightly more contemporary design by Poppy Stamps. I used Sizzix Opulent card stock in rose gold using the pearlescent to back the butterflies and layer the numbers and letters, the mirror finish for the sentiments, photo mats and main mat and the glitter finish for the leafy flourish. I finished off with Tonic Nuvo rose triad gems.

Not many couples are lucky enough to be able to celebrate being married for 70 years. It’s a really special occasion that deserves a special card to celebrate. I was asked to make 2 cards, one for my best friend and one for her sister in law to send to the same happy couple so they had to be different. They looked back at my previous makes and chose the following designs. For details of the dies used etc click on this gallery link ( Anniversary special dates ) then click on the relevant thumbnail picture in the gallery and you should get a full size picture with all details below it.