My eldest daughter celebrated her birthday this January. She’s had an amazing year becoming a first time mum, and making my hubby and I first time Grandparents. I always try to make my family cards that bit more special. I love cards that stand out from the rest and saw this cube card on youtube. I thought it would be perfect to cover with photographs to reflect events from her last 12 months. It was hard picking which photos to include as we have so many, I used every available surface as you can see from the pictures. The colour scheme was dictated by her favourite football team i.e. Manchester City but in this case was really appropriate as it was also a celebration of her becoming mum to a beautiful baby boy. Am happy to report that she loved her card and at least some of the hundreds of pictures stored on phones and tablets actually made it into print.

My friend asked me to make a birthday card for her to send to her son who is a dog groomer. I was excited to see Sam Calcott’s new Fabulous flip cards but didn’t have the dies. I did a bit or research on youtube and found various tutorials showing how to make these without the dies. Here’s my version. I was really pleased how this turned out. Obviously I had to have dogs featuring strongly and thought it would be fun to depict various dogs before and after grooming. The large dog is similar in appearance to her Son’s own dog. Cards like this are so much fun to make, give and receive. For details of dies used just click on any of the images.

My youngest daughter is an amazing baker, not by trade, she does it for pleasure. Her best makes are cakes, pastries and tray bakes. They are always really delicious. She makes celebration cakes for all the family when it’s their birthday as well as baking for colleagues at work to brighten their days. I’ve made many cards over the years for her birthdays but not a baking themed one so that’s what I chose to do this time. Making cards for family members always means a special card, even if it’s not a milestone birthday, they’ve kind of come to expect it these days. If you’ve seen my recent posts you’ll probably realise that I’m really enjoying making pop up cards lately, inspired by the fabulous Sam Calcott though not using the dies. They really make an impact and look great on the mantlepiece. For this card I used digital stamps which were free as a premium member of Craftworld. I did actually have the physical stamps too from a free give a while back with Creative Stamping magazine. The digital stamps can be resized to suit your project and in this case I enlarged pretty much all of them before colouring with Prism Brush markers and then fussy cutting them out.

My daughter’s partner enjoys lots of sports so when it came to making his birthday card this time I incorporated two of his favourites, namely golf and cycling, I then added an aeroplane as a nod to his job. I love this size of card A4 folded in half lengthwise, it’s great for scenic cards like this.

Inspired by the wonderful Sam Calcott’s ‘Pop Up Bouquet’ here’s another pop up card, this time I put the pop up mechanism on the front of the card. I made my own version of the mechanism using a score board and craft knife as I don’t have the dies. I love how this looks, you get the immediate Wow! factor when you take the card out of the envelope and it saves having to decorate the front of the card like you would have to if the mechanism was on the inside. My son in law Dave is still heavily involved with various home improvement projects, ably assisted by my hubby so he has yet again, had a DIY themed card for his birthday. For details of dies etc used to create this just click on any of the images.

Regular visitors may have seen something very similar to this before, Pop up cards are always very popular. My friend asked me to remake a card she ordered a couple of years ago, that one featured rose wine. This time she wanted pink gin to celebrate her niece in law’s special birthday. I don’t have any dies appropriate for Gin bottles or gin glass so on this occasion I used digi stamps. This allowed me to change the size and shape of the bottles and glasses. Once I was happy I printed them onto white card and fussy cut them. The images were coloured with promarkers and I then applied glossy accents. For more details re items used to create this just click on any of the images.

A sister’s birthday is always a special reason to celebrate. This particular Sister is my eldest sister who shares my love of all things papercraft. So when it comes to her birthday card I always try to go the extra mile. I also use it as an opportunity to use new dies from my stash that I’ve not yet used and preferably that she’s not yet seen (although that bit’s not always possible as we take a keen interest in each others’ die collections). I’d bought some brilliant Bright Rosa butterfly and flower dies and had also seen a great card fold/design on Pinterest that I wanted to try out. Here is my finished design. The matting and layering took some figuring out but worked out ok in the end.

I had a request recently, to make two cards for the same recipient who was celebrating his 30th birthday, one to be sent from his doting mum and the other to be sent from her best friend. I was asked to include photographs on the ‘Son’ card and chose to make a waterfall card. This is one of the easiest ways to incorporate multiple photos on one card and it’s always a firm favourite, especially with people who haven’t seen this type of card before. The second card I made using some new dies by Studio Light to create a ‘look alike’ of the recipient. I made a background which featured all of his favourite things.

Our Goddaughter celebrated her 40th birthday and so that called for an extra special card. I spoke to her dad who told me she was a massive fan of Take That, all things pink and prosecco. I saw a wonderful card made by a fellow crafter on Craftworld that was a juke box with replica miniature LP’s which had QR codes on them that linked to the tracks on youtube. I used that as my inspiration and made a whole bunch of mini CDs with QR codes too for many of her favourite Take That tracks. I made a box to contain them and then decided to put this in the centre of an exploding box card. I decorated all the sides with various stamped images. The numbers, name and sentiment die cuts were multicut to create thick chip board like embellishments which I accented with glossy accents. The final touch of bling came in the form of gem stones for that extra sparkle.

I was playing around making backgrounds using a technique I saw online. It involved smooshing distress oxide inks onto photograph paper. After a fab fun session I ended up with very inky fingers and lots of backgrounds. A few of them looked a little grungy and lent themselves to masculine makes. I embossed them with embossing folders and then applied gilding wax to accent the embossed detail. I then added silhouette die cuts which I heat embossed for added dimension and hey presto, two cool masculine cards.