The Open Sea

My niece is getting married in May! I am so happy for her. She sent me the cutest wedding invitation. It was a message in a bottle, partly filled with sand and exquisite little shells, then the invitation was rolled up and tied with raffia. The raffia was long enough to come out of the top of the bottle and be captured by the cork, so I could just haul out my invitation. It was all mailed in a sturdy mailing tube so arrive absolutely intact. Clever girl :) It's going to be a beach wedding.       

   

I just had to make a reply card that matched my niece's seascape theme. The Open Sea stamp set seemed perfect for the job.  She had chosen sand colours so I got our my Very Vanilla cardstock, and some Crumb Cake cardstock too. I embossed the background piece then mounted my stamped, sponged and heat embossed image on top. The owl punch made some cute little hearts to add, and I tied a piece of Crumb Cake netting with some gold cord and added a little bronzed fan accent.

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Hope you have a fabulous day, sweet niece :) xxx

Chalkboard technique

I've been seeing this technique all over the 'net so was delighted when a friend's class (thank you. Lesley!) focused on this technique. Here are a couple of cards we produced at Lesley's class. She had set up the stamps on a large acrylic block first. We used our embossing buddies to swipe the black cardstock first and give it a 'just erased chalkboard' feel. Then we stamped and embossed in white. I drew lines around my image in white gel pen, then we mounted the image on Stampin' Dimensionals, on Island Indigo cardstock and Sycamore Street designer paper, before tying a bow in Island Indigo ribbon. Cute, cute, cute!

Baby Bundle Fun

This week I got to play with my punches again :) I love punch art. Maybe you noticed? I seem to have a 'run' of paper punch projects at times. This time I made baby cards for a swap I joined. The brief was to make baby cards without using blue or pink, and you had to include a handmade embellishment. Enter, punches! Lol!

This little baby in a carriage was made with different sized circle punches, a border punch, some Baby Bundle stamps, ribbon and brads. I hand drew the little face. The carriage is popped up on Stampin' Dimensionals and in real life, the Lucky Limeade and Always Artichoke colours were brighter. That's Daffodil Delight ribbon, so I really need to work on how to balance my photos!

Hmm. That may be why I signed up for a photography course starting this weekend :) Hope I can improve my photo quality. Stay tuned!!

Liebster Award

How sweet is this? Vicki Hodgeman of Cards on the Table gave me the Liebster Award:

Wasn't that nice of her? Thank you, Vicki.

As part of "spreading the love" I now have to award this to 5 other blogs.
So here they are in no particular order:

1. Shirley
2. Alz
3. Frenchie
4. Melissa
5. Shanni

Do go see what these girls can do with paper :)

I'll be back with another project for you soon too.

Tea Shoppe Birthday

It is raining hard here again today so instead of taking a car trip like we planned, we stayed home to avoid the flooded roads. I thought about cleaning the house but guess what I wound up doing instead? Yep, crafting! Woo hoo!

I have a friend who is having a birthday in a few days (Shh! She isn't a crafter so I am pretty sure she won't check this blog, but you never know! Lol!)  and we have spent many enjoyable times together over a cup of tea. When I saw that Stampin' Up! has cute little Tea Time Trinkets in the new Feb - June seasonal catalogue, I just had to have some to make a card for her. They come with cute little lobster clips and split rings for you to thread on your favourite trinket. I chose the tea pot in this case but there are a couple of mugs and a teacup and saucer to choose from as well :) AND they go beautifully with the Tea Shoppe stamp set!

How cute are they!!!

This card was made with a Very Vanilla  card base.

See how shiny the main tea cup image is? It has been heat embossed with gold embossing powder, then cut out and popped up with Stampin' Dimensionals.

I used the Vine Street embossing folder (from this year's Sale-A-Bration) to make the oval background out of More Mustard cardstock. I cut that out with my oval framelets using my Big Shot.

There's Summer Starfruit stitched ribbon wrapped around the bottom of the oval and I used Chocolate Chip  Baker's Twine to add the charm, finishing with a little tied bow.

I mounted the oval on a piece of designer series paper from the Spice Cake series, on Very Vanilla and then on Old Olive cardstock.

I made the background by stamping an En Francaise image in Soft Suede on Very Vanilla cardstock, then popped that up on the Very Vanilla card base.

At the last minute I added the sentiment (also from Tea Shoppe and stamped in Old Olive and Soft Suede), a quilled yellow daisy and some Pearls. Oops! I see the little tea pot has flipped over in this photo! Sorry about that! My friend will be able to detach her tea pot charm from the card and use it as a phone dangle or to adorn any other item she so chooses. Or she can just leave it on the card.

I embossed a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock with the Tulip Frame embossing folder for the inside of the card, and stamped Happy Birthday inside the frame with the retired Well Scripted stamp set. Then I adhered it to the inside of the card and wrote a special message to my friend on it (which is why there's no photo - forgot to take one before writing the personal stuff! Sorry!) The extra piece of cardstock helped to balance the weight of the card out since I already had a few layers on the front there.

I really like how cute this card turned out. I can't wait to give it to my friend!