A Ring of Roses!

Happy Monday!  I hope your week gets off to a great start and continues in that fashion.

I’m here to share a little, easy to put together card today.  Although I have a plentiful supply of ready folded and scored craft (Kraft) cards and I absolutely love cards which are made using them …  I very rarely seem to make a card with them.  It’s the strangest thing.  I always reach for white card!  Why is that I wonder?  Bugs the life out of me!

Anyhoo ….  I made this card... consisting of some hand painted  (by me)  folksy style roses on black card, matted and layered onto some die cut white and pink card,  then fixed to a 5.5″ square Kraft/Craft card, and with the addition of a warm pink grosgrain ribbon.

The central ‘picture’ of the single rose, is an enamelled brad,  which I fixed onto a circle of die cut white card,  and then attached it to the inside of the card.  (with the addition of some bakers twine tied into a bow)

Finally, I added some pink enamelled dots to the corners of the front of the card and VOILA!  A circle of roses on a card …. which will fit into a regular envelope!

And that’s all there was to it!

Mondays can be really miserable days …. but only if YOU let them be.  Make up your mind to have a great day today.  It’s a choice.  Make the choice.

I wish you a truly lovely day.  Please  . . .  share a smile with someone.  Your smile could make a whole lot of difference to someone’s day.

Sending you love and squidges …. and sharing a smile with you  😀

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A bit of Vintage, hand made – For You!

There was a supplement with my Sunday Newspaper this week which had a nicely written article about the war years, and accompanying it were some fabulous pictures of posters from the same time.  They absolutely fascinated me.  I was sat there, with my magnifying glass out, reading each poster with gusto.  (They were all printed small size – hence the magnifying glass!)

Well they obviously had an effect on me because I sat in my craft room with just one thought…  make a card which had a vintage feel about it.  Something which had that wonderful romantic feel about it, but a card which could be sent even to a friend for a birthday or any other reason.

I started with my stash of card stock,  looking for ditsy prints.  I chose a Tilda, duck egg blue with a little flower pattern down the side, and another Tilda print from the same range, this time with teeny tiny ditsy flowers on it.  They needed ‘ageing’ – so I firstly took my scalpel to them both and roughed up the edges.  Then I chose two colours of dye pads and blended around the edges.

I used Memento Dye Ink Pads in Rich Cocoa and Rhubarb Stalk.

I wrapped the duck egg blue card stock with two short lengths of narrow lace, then attached it to a craft card which I’d already scored ready to make the card.  (The finished card will measure 5½” square).

With the ditsy flower card stock, I curled the edges and corners by gently pulling and curling them between my index finger and thumb.  I then wrapped a wider, short length of lace around the ditsy flower card stock,  and fixed it to the duck egg blue, using Collall glue.  (I love Collall all-purpose glue.  It’s not an instant fix, it gives you just enough wiggle time – but it’s an instant fix within a minute.  So if you use it – get your wiggle done asap!)

The little postcard was cut from another piece of Tilda cardstock, and I just inked around the edges (again using Rhubarb Stalk) and blended, then curled the edges and stamped  ‘for you’ using a sentiment from a gorgeous little selection of stamps from the Lillibet range.  Originally the sentiment read:  ‘Just for you” – but I snipped the ‘Just’ off (I kept it and still use it when I need to) so that I had more options with the stamp.  I then fixed it in place.

Then came the flowers…

I sorted out a little selection of paper flowers which I’ve had for … ohhh, for ever!  but realised that I had no leaves of the right size so I called on an old trick I’ve used for donkeys years.  I got out my tins of silk flowers and looked through them for flowers which I could cut up to make leaves.  I didn’t need tons, just a handful of small and slightly bigger than small ….  I then ‘dyed’ them using my ink pads:

There’s one green leaf in the photo above – which is one of a few that I dyed before I thought of taking a photograph to explain what I was doing …..  So the flower heads you see – the white and purple – are going to become leaves, using the two ink pads you see in the photo.  Memento New Sprout and Bamboo Leaves.

Now – before I show you the next photo,  if you try this yourself,   you’ve got to  HAVE FAITH.

If you try this yourself . . .   You’ll think at first that you’ve completely messed up and made the worst leaves in the whole world – but give them a few minutes and they become much nicer.

Here’s what happens when you first do them . . .

Don’t they look awful?  They’re too strong.  Too … aw, just ‘too’!  But …  have faith.  Put them to one side and get on with something else.  Don’t keep looking at them.  Just leave them alone and do something else.

While they were doing their ‘thing’, I got on with the card. 

I wanted to add a little glamour – but not too much.  So I decided that I’d add a very gentle twinkle to the card by using a Graph’It Glitter Ink pen, in Silver.  I touched really lightly all around the distressed edges of the cardstock – VERY lightly.  It left behind it the faintest twinkle, but it was enough to make it feel ‘perfect’.

 

I’m not sure if you can see it in the photo above, but if you click on the photo, it will open up much larger and you’ll then be able to see the faint twinkle to the distressed edges. (Don’t forget to click back again so that you come back here).   You’ll also be able to see that I lightly dragged the same pen over the embroidery on the lace you see in the photo.  It just gave it that teeny bit of twinkly glamour which I wanted to add to the card.

Now then  . . . .   Do you remember those awful, horrible looking leaves?    Well this is what happened to them after a few minutes . . .

See what I mean about having faith?   Those leaves are all made from petals of flowers.  The larger ones in the first photo are the very petals you saw before they’d been attacked with the ink pads.  I just inked them.  Snipped them, and then left them alone while I did something else.  Voila.  Instant leaves.

The green twiggy things are Blossom Twigs from Anna Marie Designs.

The two hat pins:  The one is a heart-shaped regular, but fancy, dressmaking pin, but the other,  the beaded hat pin was in a little set I bought from Hobbycraft about 10 months ago, for just £2 for a set of six.  (They were my bargain of the day, in the sale!)

The pink Dragonfly is one of a small selection which I’ve had in my stash for ever and ever and I can’t even remember where I got them from.

The Pink; Rose; Cream; Lilac; Blue; Red pearls which I’ve used as the centre of the flowers, and on all four corners of the card, are from a wheel of pearls made by Anita’s (I bought them from The Range – although you might be able to buy them from other places).  There are literally hundreds of these little pearls, in an amazing array of colours (all colours in one wheel – and more colours than I’ve used here) for £3  (English pounds).  You even get the storage wheel – imagine a grapefruit cut through the centre so that you can see all the segments – well that’s what this wheel is like, and each segment contains a different colour of pearls.  It’s a totally fabulous design idea and I love the pearls.  Oh .. here y’ go … I  found a link:  http://www.therange.co.uk/anitas-assorted-coloured-pearl-gemstone-wheel//the-range/fcp-product/67347

And that, as they say, is ‘it’!  One Vintage, made For You, hand-made card.

I really like this little card.  I wasn’t sure I was going to, about half way through, but I kept on with it and I’m now thrilled that I did because it’s darling.  My mum would have loved this card.  So .. Mum … this one’s for you!

Thank you so much for coming and staying for a while.  Hope you like the card.

Much love ~

Roses, Lace and ‘Shabby Chic’ . . . a handmade, uplifting card.

A ‘Shabby Chic’ look to a warm, uplifting, loved filled card with a nod to spirituality.

Shabby Chic – anywhere –  can sometimes go too far or in the wrong direction and end up looking a miserable mess of things which don’t have any relation to each other – but this card, I feel, found the right place and it almost made itself.

I started purely with that bit of rambling rose backing paper which I had left over from a scrapbooking project.  I decided that I’d make a card with what was left over.  This pretty, uplifting, warm hug feeling card was the result.  I love this card and actually wish that someone else had made it and sent it to me.

 

For those who wish to read the details of how to make something like this, here’s the ‘recipe’:-

Ingredients  (I used):- 

• Craft Card, cut to the right size, scored and corners rounded off.
• Red/brown ink pad – but any colour you want would be fine
• A little square of creamy white card
• Sheena Douglass  “Your Wings Exist – Fly” unmounted stamp (from the ‘Divine Inspiration’ set)
• A scrap of creamy coloured lace
• A length of rayon seam binding – but any ribbon you choose to tone with your own card
• Creamy white paper rose and paper rose leaves
• One large(ish) pearl for the centre of the rose (and some glitter, to drawn attention to the pearl.)
• A die cut frame (behind the rose, but you don’t necessarily need if you don’t have one)
• Two flat back pearls for either side of the die cut frame

Method

In a large mixing bowl ...  oops,  wrong type of recipe.  Let’s start again  . . . .

1.  The first thing I did was to distress the edges of the paper by scraping down the edges with a scalpel to rough them up and make that lovely ‘furry’ edge which I love. 

2.  I then used a rosy pink ink pad and a cheap make up sponge to further distress the paper but this time by blending in some ink around the outside edges, as I wanted to ‘antique’ them a little, but not using the usual browny shades.  I wanted to really warm the card up and make it blush.

3.  Choose your cardstock:  Although I have tons of white cardstock, I felt that I wanted a more vintage feel so used Craft Card to make the card itself;  Cut it to size; scored it; rounded the corners and then gathered together some Rayon seam binding, a bit of left over lace, a rose and some leaves.

4.  I attached a bit of the lace to the bottom of the card.

5.  Rayon Seam Binding.  It was the right colour but I felt it lacked something – so decided upon using the word stamp saying  ‘Strength’ from the same Divine Inspiration.  Using a reddy brown ink pad, I stamped the word onto the rayon seam binding, and then fixed the ribbon to the backing paper.

6.  I then stitched the background paper (with the attached lace and ribbon)  to the card, using my cheap little £12.99 sewing machine which I think is meant as a childs introduction to sewing machines – which I bought a few years ago specifically for sewing paper and card stock (didn’t want to use my big sewing machine as I a) didn’t want to have to drag it out every five minutes to sew a card, and b) didn’t want to mess up the mechanism of my big machine with paper and card ‘fluff’).  It’s the same as –> this one <– from Hobbycraft – but I bought mine from Aldi (one of their Thursday special offers) about three or four years ago so was cheaper.  Works brilliantly for sewing on cards.

7.  I stamped the Sheena Douglass words stamp saying  “Your Wings Exist, FLY” onto a square of creamy white card and then ‘aged’ the card by using the same reddy brown ink pad that I’d used on the roses backing paper.  using the sewing machine again, I fixed the sentiment to the card front.

8.  Distressed and then, using foam dimensional tape, I mounted the die cut frame to the centre of the card, and added the flat back pearls to each side.

9.  Using the hot glue gun, I fixed the rose into the centre of the frame, and once dry, I added the rose leaves, which I tucked under the lowest petals of the rose.

10.  The PVA came into use next, and I used it to add a large brown pearl to the centre of the rose, then sprinkled a tiny pinch of brown glitter into the glue where it had risen up the sides of the pearl – so that it helped to drawn attention to the pearl.

11.  Finally, I used a glue pen and added a few curves of glue here and there and added a tiny pinch of glitter to the glue, just to make the card catch the light and sparkle.  Added an insert, cord tassel and ‘signed’ the back.

It was a really easy, quick card to make.  Tapping out the steps to making it to share with anyone else who wants to make one the same as or similar to it, makes it look complicated.  But take another look at the photo, and you’ll see that it really wasn’t difficult at all.

I really like this card.

Thanks for coming to visit.  Have a look around the other categories while you’re here – you might like some of my other stuff.

(Menu for the categories can be found over to the right —>, towards the top of the page.)

Have a truly lovely rest of your day!