Pink Mousey Easel Card

Good afternoon! This is the last minute card that I have made this morning which will be posted as soon as the glue is dry! :)

I have used a new product to me, a Craftwork Cards, scalloped circle easel card base, can't believe I hadn't bought any of these before now, I love them!

The topper is from the Hot Diggity Dog range from Docrafts, as are the Parkstone Pink papers.
The sentiment is by Craftwork Cards and of course the 'frame' has been made using silver card candy.
The die cut letters are a quickutz alphabet, Pheobe.
I love this pretty card and hope my Auntie will too! Ni. :) x

Box Pop-Up / Trophy Card Tutorial

Good (but a very dark and rainy!) afternoon.
I'm posting today the previously mentioned tutorial for a box pop up/trophy style card.

This is a relatively new style of card to me but I can already see it becoming useful for displaying very detailed images in an effective way, such as the new Docrafts, Michael Powell scene stamps. Here is a sample from my first demo this month. This image is the exclusive stamp from the new March goody bag that I have coloured in with Zig Kurecolor twins and Promarkers. The border strip was made using the doily dots border punch and the sentiment is from a sheet of Michael Powell die-cut toppers.

Ok, here come the instructions.....

Box Pop up Card
(From a 12” x 12” sheet of card)

1. First cut a strip 11cm in width. This will be your card base.
2. From the remaining card cut a strip 9cm in width off the shorter side. This will become your pop up section.
3. Lay the base strip horizontally and score down the short side at lines 1, 3,4 and 6 on the Xcut board.
4. Fold the card on the line 6 score and trim off the narrow strip of excess card. Unfold.
4. Rotate the card and repeat the scoring starting from the other short side (score lines 6 will overlap each other).
5. Flip the card over to the reverse and find the line 6, center score. Cut a narrow aperture 1cm in from each edge and a few millimeters in width.
6. Still working on the back of the card. Fold in one of the edge tabs and apply tape to the tab.
7. Slide your pop up section through the aperture and stick it to the tape on the folded tab.
8. Fold the other end of the scored strip over and stick the other tab to the back of the pop up section to complete your card.
Decorate!

*** To make on a score board with measurements. ***
Keep your card at 30cm in length by 11cm width. Score at 2.5cm, 7.5cm, 10cm and 15cm.

There is an exclusive video of this style of card being made in the Docrafts Creativity Club and im sure there are other videos on the internet somewhere that are similar too; or if you are near to one of my demonstrations in the next 2 months I shall be doing frequent demo's of this so you can come along and see it being made in person!
Thanks for stopping by, Ni. :) x

New Docrafts Demo's

Wow here we are in March already which means it is now time for a new product release from Docrafts. Yay! :)

For the last week I have been shut away in my craft room (whenever I was not at work of course!) busily prepping for my first demo which was yesterday and at another new shop to me, Capture the Magic in Soham. I had a great day in this aladin's cave of crafting goodies (I spent a few pennies too at the end of the day of course!) and met some lovely ladies and really enjoyed demoing the new products.

There are a few new ranges this loop,

* Micheal Powell. Gorgeous scene stamps that work well with promarkrs and watercolours alike.
* Enchanted Fairies. Another collection of the fairies which were previously released in a christmas theme.
* Heartwarmers. A huge collection of fabulous greetings toppers.
*Bookprint. Travel themed urban stamps and matching image papers.
...and of course, the new star...
* Boofle! A wide collection of products featuring the knitted dog. The new Docrafts magazine has a free Boofle clear stamp set!

Over my next few posts I will be sharing some of my demo cards from each range and my new tutorial for this loop a pop up box card/trophy card. Back soon, Ni. :) x

Pink 30th Card

Evening all!
Isn't it typical, the day I planned to spend uploading the rest of my samples for this loop of demonstrations is the day that we get 3 1/2" of snow and also our broadband goes down! The latter lasted over a week until a technician came and fitted a new modem & router which is why I haven't posted any new makes for a while.

However this may have been a good thing as it meant that I stayed in the house whilst the snow was bad over the weekend and got a few personal cards made and some extra samples instead of going out or getting lost wandering the internet for hours!
Here is one of my makes, a pretty pink card for a friend.

This card is based on a wordbook style, the front ends at the '3' and the back is the longer panel with the '0'.
I have actually used all Docrafts products on this card but there is a mix of old and new ranges.

The digits are the new more curvy style of typography stamps which I stamped onto hot pink card, cut out and smothered in glitter! Also new is the hot pink glitter satin ribbon and the paper and sentiment from the Hot Diggity Dog collection.
The older products are the pink paper flowers, silver gems, dimensional butterflies and the Tulip layered 'Cake' die.
As you may know if you have read some of my older posts, I love this style of die, you make all the layers of the image and piece it together so you can choose colours to suit your project. If you look at the labels on my sidebar you will see my 'Layered Dies' tag where you can see how I used a die in this same style from the Tatty Ted range.

Right that's it for now, i'm off to upload a few more samples to Docrafts before bed. Night. :) Ni. x

Fabulous news - I'm now a Docrafts demonstrator! :)

...well its fabulous news for me anyway lol!



I can finally reveal what has been taking up all my time recently, yes that's right the post title says it all.

I have been asked to become a docrafts demonstrator! YAY!

I carried out a trial demo with the new July/Aug products a few weeks ago and the prep was definitely a lot of 'work' (although I can't say it was unpleasant!) ;)
It took longer than I realised to work out how to use all the goodies I'd been asked to demo and in the end I made 20 or so projects just for my 3 hour demo!

* All the cards are being added to my DC gallery over the next few days, although I've uploaded a pic here of the full demo table on the day! * I'll also be sure to add a button here in my sidebar to link directly to my demonstrator gallery.*

I will definitely be posting on here a lot more here now as I will be trying to upload all my demo cards along with the products used and the details of how I made them.

Lastly I would like to say a huge Thank You to those few people that knew I'd applied and wished me good luck and also for their congratulations.
Also, to the people that have been over and commented on the new cards already, I'm glad they seem to be ok!
Am now looking forward to my first 'real' demo in September!

Thanks for reading, from a very happy, Ni. :)

'Ultimate' Happy Birthday Cards.

Been busily playing with the new Happy Birthday Ultimate Pack and few other bits from the new DoCrafts releases and have made the following:


Firstly using the new typography happy birthday stamp which I coloured, and some of the cardstock stickers also in the collection. I wanted to personalise it and so this will be perfect for my cousins little boy later this month!

This is an easel card that I've kept monochromatic using the capsule collection sizzling red hot smooth card with the 5 and 0 stamps, another cardstock present sticker and some gems.

Lastly using an idea in the new creativity magazine I made a basic pop up card. Decorated the front using die cut shapes, greeting and paper from the ultimate pack. Also covered the pop up with tag and present die cuts and added a blank shape for writing a message on.  

 

Just a few simple cards but I really like the colours and paper patterns in this new collection and am pleased with these cards. TFL, Ni :) x

Cupcake Card!

Good afternoon! Hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend, I have been poorly in the last week so it was only my first day out of bed yesterday for a while. To make up for it today I have set myself and the laptop up in the garden in the sunshine! Yay! :)

***

Here is a card I made last night for a friends birthday this month. She is cupcake mad so what could be better than:

Yum! This was made using the DC freebies from one of the fairly recent magazines, the designs are part of the Little Cake Shoppe range.

As well as the cupcake stamps you also got an A6 daisy embossing folder which is how I embossed my scalloped card blank, then I inked over the top to make a nice patterned background.

The cupcakes were stamped in black ink and clear heat embossed to make them shine and then coloured in with promarkers. Each image was then mounted onto nestie cut circles of white card inked at the edges and mounted onto foam pads.

The sentiment was stamped in the same ink and clear heat embossed and I added 2 daisy eyelets to finish.

Another simple to produce card but I think my friend will love it! TFL! Ni :) x

Another Male Card!

Wow 2 posts in as many days! Shocking!
This is a card I made late last year, before I had a blog, but as I have been having to think about making male cards recently and I thought this was a good trick I have decided to post the card on here now too!

I know this card is again very simple, (my mens cards always seem to be as I dont use ribbon, flower embellies or gems etc), but it had never occured to me to use 35mm film in my crafting before!
The idea arrived because I couldn't find any photography themed decoupage or suitable digi images anywhere. Luckily I had an old film that had expired as I have used a digital camera for years and so I just pulled it off the reel!

The paper is from the DC Papermania Men's world pack, the die is again my Sizzix favourite and the embellishment was in a '10p each' box at a local craft shop! I was really pleased with how this turned out and the recipient thought it was brilliant as it was so different. :)

TFL, Ni x

Twisted Double Easel Card - Mini Tutorial!

Hi, thanks for stopping by!
This is my first tutorial post and its really only a mini one as it is condensed but hopefully it will help at least one person if they are wondering how to make this style of card! :)

These are my new favourite style of card at the moment and really simple to make:

You need to start with a square piece of card. Mine was 21cm x 21cm which folds to make a DL card size - so you can use a DL card blank and easily find an envelope to fit it in! :)

Fold the square in half and make a cut from the middle of the fold (thats 10.5cm along) down to the bottom edge of the card.

Score from the middle of the fold (same point that you made your cut from) on a diagonal angle down to the bottom corners of the card and then mountain fold all the score lines to give you this:

Next cut 2 topper squares of card at 10.5cm x 10.5cm and attach to the front triangles on the base card. Remember, only stick the squares to the two 'inner' triangles on your base card or it wont fold and work as an easel. I made a note of where to put the glue in the pic above so I dont forget!

Lastly, make a stopper however you wish, mounted onto foam pads to lean the topper squares against.

I used two circles on the FH challenge entry in my last post and the one below is just a strip of card that I decorated with a border punch.

That's it, card base complete! Told you it was simple! :)

***

Here is another double easel card I recently created for two DC challenges so you can see a finished sample:

This was for the:

* The ABC Colour Challenge 'J', colours Jet Black and Jasmine Yellow.

* Clare Curd's Weekly Sketch Challenge.

Hope the tutorial is ok, any comments/friendly criticsms welcome!

Thanks for stopping by! Ni x

Quick Cricut Cards!

Oh dear, too much time has passed yet again in between posts for my liking! Just never seem to have enough time to sit and focus on writing, maybe I should waffle less, lol!

However I am pleased to say that I have been crafting a bit! 2 quick cards follow today using my still so very new cricut! & I have 2 challenge projects ready to share, with another in progress! :)

Here is the first card,

A really simple card made using a phrase and its' shadow from Paper Lace in the local football team's colours and some peel-offs stuck onto shiny white card and cut out, then layered onto foam pads!

Next up is this pretty girlie card:

Again made using Paper Lace but just the font function this time to spell the name. Clear embossed the tiny flowers (from the DC freebie cupcake set!) and added a few gems, ribbon and a 'fake' bow! Love it!

So that's it, 2 really quick simple cards, but each perfect for the recipient IMHO and I hope they like them! :) x

Holiday!!!!

This week I am off work as working in retail you just dont get any time off over xmas so I always book myself a week in Jan to rest up and play with my new xmas goodies!

Oh and what goodies they were;
my cricut personal, paper lace & wild card cartridges, 1st MS punch monarch butterfly corner, docrafts border and larger flower punches, tons of card and an embossing folder.... phew!
Thats a lot for me, in the next few weeks i'm hoping to upload cards made using them all! :)

*****

Here is my first card of 2011, one of my resolutions was to take part in more DoCrafts challenges so this actually fits the criteria for 2!

The ABC colour challenge was to use grey, a real challenge for me as I didnt think I had any grey papers - I didn't so I made some using MCS!!
I also used my new border punch from DC to make the lace border with my new capsule collection card, and the, G for gold, embellishments using the new large flower punch layered with my small one. Yay used some of my new stash already!