Aarrr! Avast, me hearties; Swashbuckling Pirates Ahoy!

Hullo thar me hearties … It’s Pirate Cobs sailing the ocean waves!
Ok .. well no, not quite. It’s just me … showing you the card I made for my Grandson, on his birthday recently.  I’m totally besotted with this little chap. He’s the complete apple of my eye and he has me wrapped around his little finger. He gives out his orders: “Grammy, … come to ma rooom. C’mon Grammy. Come to ma rooom!” and up I get and toddle after him. Actually no, I don’t toddle after him. He waits at the start of the hallway and then holds my hand so that I don’t get lost on the way there. (Not joking. He actually does.).

This blog post about the pirate card is rather picture heavy, so I’ll try not to be too wordy and just post photographs with a bit of description to support each photo. But if there’s anything specific you want to ask, or you want to know either how I did something or what brand something is, or even where I bought something, then just give me a shout in a comment and I’ll answer any questions you might have.

(To make a comment: scroll up to the top of this post, to the heading: “Aarrr!  Avast, me hearties; Swashbuckling Pirates Ahoy!” – and look to the right of that title where you’ll see a pale grey speech bubble. If you hover your mouse over that speech bubble it will turn deep red. Click on that, and it will open up a comment box for you – and also show you any comments which might have already been made).

It was his 4th Birthday, so he’s still a little chap, and I kind of introduced him to Pirates about two years or so ago, when we were out shopping together – he was sat in my shopping trolley (‘cart’ for US folks) in Toys-R-Us when we came across a huge section of dress up clothes, and like the Magpie that I am, I went straight for the hats.  I tried several hats on the young man (and took hilarious photos on my phone camera of him in them) and couldn’t resist trying on the fabulous three-cornered pirate hat myself.  I told him what I was, and then did the ‘Aarrr me hearties’ pirate greeting, accompanied by the arm gesture, which he instantly caught onto and did back to me.  Awww reader, I so wish you could have been there.  I was hysterical with laughter, loving him and covering him in kisses, tears streaming down my face and all the time trying to get him to say it again, and again, and …. well, you get the idea.  He was such a tiny tot, and this made it all the funnier.

Oh well anyway … let’s get on with this card, shall we?

Start with 2 x 6″ sq. cards, and glue/tape together as shown in the photo above.

I tend to double-sided tape and use glue to fix both of the cards together.  It just makes the whole thing more sturdy.

Once fixed together, cut the cards as shown above.

You can click on any of these photographs here to make them bigger.  (But don’t forget to click ‘back’, to come back to reading!)

Using the two sections cut off in the previous photograph, fix your chosen papers (once cut to size) to those pieces of card.

Now is the time to fix either matching paper, or toning paper to the inside back of the card.

While your glue is drying on the main card, you can turn your attention to decorating those corner pieces. On this side of the ‘scene’, I’ve built a sandy beach by tearing some regular sandpaper carefully, into the shape I want it to be and then fixing it in place.

I had a devil of a job finding some of this sand coloured sand paper!  Everywhere had either black sandpaper or deep red coloured.  I very nearly kissed the shop owner when I finally found some!

My favourite part of card making! Decorating and embellishing. I added tiny, multi coloured fish. shells, star fish, and some sea glass ‘look’ beads – all made from plastic, into a fishing net (I have no idea of where I got this net from, but I know you can buy netting from lots of places). I added a bronze coloured metal starfish and a Tibetan Silver Seahorse too, for contrast.

And then added a few sprinkles of fine glitter, to make the ‘trawl’ in the net look wet and straight from the sea. I also added the rope (hairy string) around the edge of the scene.  Now is the time to fix this ‘flap’ into place.  I tend to use super strength red double-sided tape, but anything which you know is a really good fix, will do the trick.

The inside of the card …. I added some of the same papers, but wanted a little boy pirate and found the very thing in one of my Lili of the Valley topper books. I made the rolled up pirate maps from some faux parchment, and tied them up with deep red baby ribbon. The starfish brad was from a selection I’ve had for a while.

Although I used the same papers throughout the card, I wanted the paper on the ‘inside back’ to look more bright blue, like the sort of pirate seas you’d see in a children’s book, so I rubbed in some bright blue inks, carefully, to kind of brighten the sea to something more magical looking.  (If you do this, make sure you leave time for the paper to dry out).

The ‘front’ of the card. A tiny glass bottle filled with gold and silver teeny tiny gems, which twinkle and sparkle as the light catches them. An anchor hanging up to the top right, along with a little metal tag which reads: “Treasures”. Some miniature wooden cotton reels, onto which the rope (string) which surrounds the card edges is wound. A Tibetan Silver Mermaid holding a golden star, swims through the waves!

This front flap is left ‘swinging’ free.  You don’t fix this flap into place.  However … you can fix this into place if you’re making a card and want to have the card stand up by the use of either a stand specially made for the back – or by leaning the card on a wall or such.  You can then put tags inside the card for the recipient.

In this photograph you can see that there are tags now sitting inside the folded and stuck down section of the card, along with a ribbon loop for pulling the bigger tag out of the pocket.  There’s also a pocket watch hanging from the ribbon loop!

Showing how you stand the card up just using that one free corner.

Close up of the inside of the flap. I made the pirates eye patch by simply cutting a small circle out of black card, using a punch, then cutting the circle in half, and round off the corners. I used a large balling tool and firm mat to ‘bend’ the edges slightly; drew on the pirates skull and crossbones using a white pen, added some black string and VOILA!  Pirate Eye patch.

The ‘big’ tag removed from the pocket. I drew all those foot prints which ‘walk’ around the island, along with some palm trees. And of course … every good pirate map HAS to have an X which marks the spot where the treasure is hidden!

There are two tags hidden inside the larger tag. This photograph shows the back of the large tag – where there’s a poem for my Grandson, and these are one sides of the two small tags – one shows that rascal Captain Hook, with a string attached on which a pirates dagger is strung! The other tag is stamped and says: “You are the FUNSHINE of my life”, and this has a little gold love token hanging from it.

The other sides of the two little tags. One is stamped with ‘Happy Birthday’ and the other has a picture of Tic Toc, the naughty crocodile who bit Captain Hook!  I’ve only just realised that I haven’t shown you the wonderful Galleon ship which I put on the poem side of the card!  You can just about see the sails of it behind Tic Toc.  I had this rub on in my stash for about 6 years.  I wouldn’t part with it because I knew that I’d use it one day.  I wish I’d have taken a photograph of it to show you.  It’s just the nicest thing!

Let’s remember there’s a back of the card! That’s where all the pirate treasure is. Gold, Silver, Gems and Pearls!
The ’empty’ postcard was made using an Urban Stamp, and a lovely gingery brown ink pad. It’s where the dedication was written. (To … , Happy Birthday, love from … etc).

The box…. here, showing the inside of the box – lid and base.

The outside of the box, the card and … a little gold bag of Pirate Treasure!
The lid of the box was firstly decorated with a sheet of sand paper, onto which I fixed a Pirates Map. The fabulous Pirates, the Galleon, Flags etc etc were all an incredible accidental find in a supermarket. I ‘think’ it might have been Tesco, but if not there, then it may have been Sainsburys.
Inside the golden bag are two gold coins. Chocolate coins, naturally!

And that, as they say in TV land, is all there is to it!  Phew!  I swear it took longer to take the photo’s, load them onto the computer and re-size them, than it did to make the card!  (But then I’m useless with a camera so that’s no surprise! lol).  As promised, here is the very short pirate song which is my grandsons favourite song with regards to pirates:

Thank you so much for coming and sharing this fun card with me.  I hope you have a truly fabulous rest of your day!

Love and hugs ~

 

 

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