She said, he said

It's amazing the difference a colourway makes.  The same card in different papers can be feminine, masculine or even either.

The cards were made with one of the Spellbinders "Cut, Fold and Tuck"™ dies on double-sided paper.  The motif was matted on to a plain X-Cut frame and a patterned card with a couple of matted X-Cut Tags ready for the greeting.

The matting on this card was a paper straw sheet from The Works - it can be die-cut and takes colour well.

The cards will probably be gussied up a bit once I have someone in mind to send them to; flowers and ribbon for feminine with perhaps a pearl or three (or six or eight or ...) and gemstones to embellish a masculine card.

Take a second look (and ignore the description on the box)

Often enough, dies are given descriptive names, especially seasonal ones.  If you squint sideways at some of them, they can be used otherwise.  For example, the newish docrafts  Build-A-Scene Vintage Hot Air Balloon, turned upside down, will be a good Christmas bauble later on this year (and the Marianne bauble dies I have would make good balloons).  I have a snowflakey border die which looked far too dynamic for a gentle snowfall.

This was for a friend with a birthday near Fireworks Night.

I used the Memory Box Frostyville Border Die™ because I thought it looked like an exuberant firework display.  I cut it from gold card, coloured the various flourishes and glued it to the front of a stepper card.  I had some deep blue glitter card for a background and rough-cut a border of houses out of black card.  The star/snowflake waste from the die was added to the sky.

Steam Acetate

I had a better go with acetate - a good job as I had a birthday to make a card for (and a male birthday at that).  I think just about everything on this card is from docrafts - the embossing folder was a Sizzix Tim Holtz one from when docrafts were doing Sizzix (please assume the ™ symbols where appropriate).

I used some dark blue core'dinations card for the first layer and cut a circle and tag out of it before layering some Chronology backing paper over it. What you can't see, you don't miss.  I stamped the astrolabe from the cover gift stamp and cut it out, including cutting the middle bits; once coloured, this was glued onto the circle I'd liberated from the dark blue card.

I embossed the acetate with a clock/watch folder and put the astrolabe and message tag on top - putting the double-sided tape under the toppers so it wouldn't show through.

Playtime

A couple of weeks ago, the Craft Barn which was in Lingfield, moved to just outside Redhill and had a whole lot of demonstrators to celebrate.  I was quite taken by the Exploding Box one of them did.  I've seen Exploding Boxes before, usually three nesting boxes, and hadn't quite seen the charm, but this was something different.

This weekend I was crafting with a group of friends and decided to try it.

The base of the box is only two inches square and the sides are three inches high, so it can be cut from an eight by eight inch square.  Score three inches in from each side and cut out the corners leaving a cross shape.  One of the corner pieces will make a lid (just add a smidge - two thicknesses of card plus a sliver  - to the two inches of the top).

I used one of the smaller dies from the Spellbinders Romantic Rectangles™ on some plain card and used it to frame a pretty floral.  These (eight) pieces were stuck on the sides of the box, inside and out.

The lid just had the plain and floral card layered as had the bottom of the inside of the box.

Before sticking the layers together for the bottom of the box, I cut four slits diagonally by each corner and threaded a strip of acetate through each pair; then bent the acetate up and glued on some flowers and butterflies.

I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the person who demonstrated this, but thank you to her.

An Experiment in Acetate

Not entirely successful - I didn't like the edges which is why I bound them with ribbon.

I've had the Spellbinders Persian Motifs and Accents™ for a while  and wanted to play.  I also wanted to try out embossing with acetate.  I probably shouldn't have been so mean with the acetate and allowed a margin to fold behind the backing card.

I embossed the largest of the motifs onto the acetate (didn't cut it - just used the motif as an embossing stencil).  In the centre I put a smaller motif for my greeting and cut the long accent from the same card.

I trimmed the long strip accent to fit the top of the acetate.  The acetate fixes to the card with double sided tape stuck behind the shapes and a line across the bottom where I was going to put ribbon anyway. 

Binding up the sides hides the edges - I think next time I will either allow a margin to tuck under or punch a decorative edge to the acetate.

Cupcake Wrappers - too good to eat

There are some very pretty cupcake wrappers in the shops - it seems such a waste to use them once and throw them away - especially at the price!  But, with a little imagination, and a complete disinclination to faff around decorating cupcakes, they make good card decorations.

Both of these were made for Easter last year (I know I said I don't do Easter cards, but a new technique, spring, and a dearth of birthdays ...)  I stamped the flower, stamped onto a post-it to mask it while I stamped a script stamp over the top.  I think the die is Spellbinders Label 18™ and I inked the edges with the same colour as the script and flower.

One wrapper did both of these cards - a little judicious snipping, a few gems and a greeting and there you are.

I don't usually do Easter Cards ...

... but this one has spring colours and I wanted a card for someone.

This is the first time I've tried the Fancy Lattice in colour - so of course I used the darkest purple I could find! It needed a strong frame to pull it off, so I used gold mirror card.   I tried several things behind the lattice, but nothing worked - each would have been fine on its own, but putting them together muddied the overall look.  In the end, I decided to go with Spider Web.

The Spider Web puts a bit of texture behind the lattice - I'm still wondering if I should have tried to colour it with a lilac ink, but I'm not sure that fabric will take colour - something to try another time!

Flowers round one corner, butterflies up the other side and a tag from Spellbinders Antique Frames and Accents™ and the card's finished.  I've found that for sticking fiddly stuff like the flowers and especially the pearl centres, a squeeze of a PVA glue spread onto a small square of Cut'n'Dry™ foam is easiest - my PVA always gums up the nozzle - so I can swipe the flower lightly across the glue using some bent-nosed tweezers and place it on the card - and you only get as much (or as little) glue on as you need.