I love the contrast of white on plain kraft card so I randomly stamped lots of small snowflakes onto kraft cards. I then swiped old book pages with TH Picket Fence distress paint to dull down the yellow colour of the old pages. I then cut out snowmen from the whitened pages & stuck them on the snowy cards. The slightly wonky mouths really give them character. I don’t think any greeting is needed – the picture says it all.
Just booked for this fabby extra Christmas craft fair. Crafts, carols & cakes!
A commission for a 40th birthday card for a lady who ‘likes retro, Cath Kidson, & dreams of owning a VW camper van’. This ‘Britannia die’ looked a bit fiddly with all the separate pieces to cut out but it wasn’t as tricky as it looked, & went together quite well.
I was asked to make a 21st Birthday card for a colleague’s son, who is into video games. The old Quickutz ‘controller’ die worked very well with the new Quickutz ‘Retro TV’ die to make a fun card.
As a lover of all things quirky & retro, I am always on the look out for unusual items to incorporate into my cards. I spotted Christmas trees made out of dymo tape on Pinterest & decided to put my own twist on them. It was a bit of a struggle to track down green dymo tape, but I managed to find a supply.
A lot of people worry about reaching milestone Birthdays as they sound so old. When I was a teenager I considered people in their 30’s to be ‘proper, grown-up adults’, those in their 40’s & 50’s ‘middle aged’ & 60’s & over, ‘old-age pensioners’, & ‘well past it’. Now, having passed a few of these milestones, I think differently. You are only as old as you feel, or in this case, as old as your scrabble tiles say.
I had bought a new tunic top for a retirement party but the neckline was a bit low for my liking. It needed a nice necklace to set it off. The top was mainly black with shades of brown, so a necklace in these colours would be perfect. I raided my plastics collection to see what I could find. The very dark brown was from coffee jar lids, the semi-transparent brown from a mouthwash bottle, the mustardy one from a tablet bottle, & the pale brown one from a ‘Coffee Mate’ lid. I knew I had a selection of black & coppery jewellery findings which would have been ideal, but they were obviously hiding somewhere out of sight. Unfortunately, as it was the night before the party I didn’t have time to search for them so I just tied the ‘beads’ together with waxed cotton, & did the same for the closure. This looked OK & worked well to join the ‘beads’ but I would need to find a more robust closure. Now where did I put those findings?
The theme for this months challenge was the colour blue & an umbrella. I originally wanted to use my Tim Holtz Umbrella Man, but as I am doing ATC-sized pictures the die-cut was too big. The stamp just fitted but there would have been no room for any words. Instead I opted for the Spellbinders In’spire umbrella die.
I cut a black ATC & randomly daubed it with blue acrylic paint. I then dabbed Salty Ocean & Brushed Pewter distress paints on & spritzed it with water. Once dry I mounted it on blue card. I cut the umbrella from silver card & printed the words using a dymo Letra tag label maker on silver tape. I used Deco Art liquid glass to simulate raindrops on the umbrella.
I was asked to make a 50th birthday card for a secretary who likes shopping. I have made a few cards for secretaries using the Tim Holtz alterations typewriter die, which I love. I recently bought this new, smaller typewriter die from In’spire by Spellbinders, & couldn’t wait to try it out. I also just bought some thin wood sheets from EK Success. They are thin enough to cut with punches so die-cutting was easy. They are a bit flimsy so I stuck the wood sheet to a double-sided adhesive sheet before die-cutting. This strengthened the wood & also made it easy to stick to the card. For the keys I cut the shape again from pearlised card & stuck the individual keys into the corresponding holes on the wooden typewriter. This was a bit fiddly but the result was worth it. The bags are from a selection of dies: Quickutz, Memory Box & Bosskut.
