Nice Day to Bake . . . a card.

Haaapy Monday!  Can you believe it’s already the 22nd of May??  I had to do a double take when I looked at the calendar.  (Although why it’s called a Calendar I don’t know.  Surely it should be called a CalenDAY?  It makes sense!  Calenday.  “Sweetheart . . . What date does it say on the calenday for a week on Monday?”   See?  Calenday.  I think we should start a movement and all begin to call it a Calenday.  That will get things put right!)

[thinks to self:  perhaps I should write to Mr.Trump, and Mr.Putin,  Prime Minister May,  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,   South Korean President Park Geun-hye,  Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe,  French President Francois Hollande ….. and of course I shall drop The Queen a note about this.  I’m sure Her Majesty will agree that this is a grand idea!]

Aaaannnyhoo….  I made a card and I promised myself that I wouldn’t do a big long post and bore everyone to tears, so I’ll get on with showing you the card.

It was all made on a scored 6″x6″ white card.

Measured, cut and fixed in place the hessian you see in the photo (below), and while that was drying,  I distressed some pale(ish) blue gingham paper, tearing it and rolling it in places,  added some blue gingham ribbon and fixed the paper and ribbon two-some, in place, on top of the hessian.

Next came fussy cutting some honeycomb from a sheet of honeycomb printed paper then adhered it to the gingham paper.  Time for a little decoupage: to make the dresser, where the chicken has laid her eggs, and one little chick has already hatched.  🙂

If you look really closely you just might be able to see that there’s a cobweb in the space where the drawer is missing, – to the right hand side, in the upper corner of the drawer space.  I thought that was a nice touch considering who was making this.  lol

Can’t see it?  . . .  here it is . . .

I added bits of straw in various places,  and a tiny wooden rolling-pin – hanging on some cotton.  The silver bumble bee you see hanging below the large red petal flower is also hanging on a thread, so giving the buzzy bumble a ‘flying’ movement.

The lovely, fluffy marmalade coloured feather was donated by one of our chickens: Miss Edna BIG BIRD, HUGE EGGS Chicken.  She’s so accommodating.  I ask for a feather and she does the ‘chicken wiggle’ and out pops something perfect.  lol

The flower adornment was made using some pretty coloured stamens, some loofah strands,  a tiny piece of muslin which I pulled some threads from to make it kind of ‘feathery’ around the edges, and that lovely ‘blousy’ flower from my stash.

Finally,  it was time for some attention to the inside:  using some distressed yellow gingham paper,  cut to size,  I made an insert which I then stamped and added a Country Chicken ticket in the lower right hand corner.

OH!   And I added a bow made from the ribbon, to the front of the card!

And that,  as they say,  is all there was to it!

The papers and ribbons are all part of the DoCrafts ‘Home Sweet Home’ range.  I bought them about a year ago and used some of them, but then Summer moved to Autumn and so I put them away reminding myself to get them out again this year.  And … as strange as this might sound,  I actually remembered!  Ha!  Miracles really do happen.  😀

Everything else came from my stash.

So, changing the subject  ….  I was thinking about Mondays,  and I’ve worked out that Mondays were invented as a punishment for all the fun we have at the weekends!  Seriously.  It makes total sense when you think about it.  We all do have more fun at the weekends, and we obviously needed something to kind of get us back into line – so Monday was invented.  SOO….  Just get it over with and within 24 hours, it will be Tuesday,  after that  . . .  it’s all heading towards Friday  😀  … can’t get better than that!  So lets change things round a little.  Smile today.  Be happy.  Be all twinkly eyed and joke around.  Beat the system!

Oh … and just to get you started, here’s a Monday Special:

Q: What do you call a parade of rabbits hopping backwards? . . .   A: a receding hare-line.

Have a great day out there.  Be nice to yourself, and each other.  And … remember to look both ways when you cross the road!

Happy Anniversary! I pegged on a Chalkboard.

Before we begin …. 

This little chalkboard is proof, if more proof were needed, that I’m a ‘fricken’ rubbish photographer.  You see … in real life, this little chalkboard is so sweet.  So lovely.  Incredible in fact.  Something I was so proud of making,  and still am proud of making.  But in  all  the photos (and there were a LOT of photos taken) there wasn’t one good one. Not one.  🐻  (I wanted an emoticon with steam coming out of the ears but couldn’t find one, so you have a grumpy bear instead).

It was Mr.Cobs and his enchanting  sweet  charming  wonderful  captivating  rubbish photographer wife’s (me) 36th Wedding Anniversary recently and I wanted something other than just a normal card for him.

I know, 36 years!  I heard you gasp when you read it the first time.  It’s hard to believe isn’t it,  because I look so young in my Gravatar photo. What can I say …  he was a cradle snatcher, but I’ve grown accustomed to his face now so I won’t bother causing a fuss.

I went in search of something which would stand up on the shelf or coffee table, but which wasn’t made from a card or paper product.  I found the very thing. A little Chalkboard!

It came as four unprepared pieces – so that you can do whatever you wish to them.  A front and a back piece – which are identical.  And a frame front section which goes on top of the front piece – so forming the frame around what will become the chalkboard, and finally – a smaller piece which will give you the little shelf for the chalk.

I waded straight in and painted the section on the front piece, in black paint to make it look like the black of a chalkboard.  While it was drying, I glued the ‘chalk shelf’ to the frame.  Once the paint was dry, I then fixed the frame onto the front (chalkboard painted) section, and held it tightly using some craft clamps and clips.

I painted the legs, frame and back of the chalkboard in Amish Blue paint, then once dry I coated it in a crackle glaze – which I bought many years ago (about 25 years ago) by the bucket-load, (well no, about 15 large bottles of it).  It was a new thing on the market then and I loved to crackle crafty stuff.  I had a couple of bottles left . . . . 

I got a bottle out of my cupboard while chewing on my lip, telling myself that it would be no good.  It would have gone off after all this time.  BUT … IT HADN’T!!!   Ohhhh Joy thy name is Crackle!  I duly painted a coat of the crackle glaze, and once dried, I gave it another coat of the Amish Blue.  I didn’t want the ‘white peeping from behind the blue, or black or red etc’ thing that everyone seems to do.  I wanted a crackle which I could rub some antiquing medium into the cracks so that it had that old cracked varnish look like you find on things in posh shops.

Once everything dry, I added some white stencilling paste around the corner of the chalkboard to give it the suggestion of chalk dust sitting on the side.

Then I turned my attention to fixing the chalkboard back and front together – with soft white string as you can see in the photo’s.  And also make the ‘note’ which I wanted to fix to the board.

 

Next was the turn of the decorative paper flowers to the lower left corner.  White paper roses, some Prima blue daisies, and Prima pink roses.  Moss, and a few other bits of floral decorations and the corner was done!  (The twigs and the teeny pine cones came from my garden).

I added the sentiment – on some lovely striped paper from DoCrafts, in their Floral Muse range (which I ‘vintaged’ using brown ink and a duster brush), and fixed them in place using the two pegs (now glued to the board) and a dab of glue to the back of the ‘note’ to make sure that it didn’t try to make a get-away!

In case you can’t read it, the note says:   Happy Anniversary!  You are my best decision EVER!

 

And that’s all there was to it!

Explaining it makes it sound really complicated, but it really wasn’t.  Truthfully.  If I made it then any idiot with some glue, paint and a brush can do it.

Oh … and yes, he really was.  My best decision,  ever.

After the three photographs you’ve seen here …. (and remember, these are not good) …  this was the next best one….

Look how blurred that is!!!   When I first opened up this last photo, I initially took my glasses off and rubbed them with the hem of my t-shirt which I had on!  I thought it was my glasses…. then my eyes …. and only after that did I realise that it was my fantastic talent for taking shocking photos.   (And if you think this one is bad you ought to see the ones I WOULDN’T show you!  lol).  But … if you look really carefully to the top bar, over the chalkboard, you can just about see the fine cracked varnish affect I got from using the same colour over the top of the crackle glaze, and then rubbing antiquing medium into the cracks to make the cracks show up.

Ah but anyhoo …

Before I go I have something I just have to share this with you.  Mr.Cobs reads a little selection of newspapers on-line and he popped over to the Daily Mail to glance down the main home page to see if there was anything he’d missed from elsewhere.   I came in from my craft room to find him laughing so hard (yet trying to keep it under control) so much that I thought he was about to have a fit of some description.  He eventually calmed down enough to show me what he was laughing about.  When I looked at it I too began to giggle, then laugh, eventually having to grab a tissue to wipe my eyes so I could continue to read.  I thought that I would love to share this with you because … well, there’s so much in life to give us a frown right now that if I can make just one of you smile even a little then grabbing the link to this would be very much worth it.  So, with my love, and with the advice of making sure you too have a tissue ready ….  I share this link:  Daily Mail UK – Answers Children gave for Tests.   It will open in another window for you. 

Enjoy!

Thanks for coming for a visit, I love to see you, but then, you know that already.  ❤

Have a blessed day.  Be good to each other.   See you next time.  

Just for you … if you’d like it.

I had a card making day  …. and made a card with a sort of cottage, country feel to it.  The card and papers used are all by Docrafts, who, by a remarkable coincidence, are based here in Dorset, where I live!  (No I haven’t been and raided the warehouse in the dead of night  … yet.  But only because I think I’d need several helpers to bring home all the stash I’d want! lol)

The blue flower and green crochet doily (under the flower) are Prima and the feather … is from Edna.

No Edna isn’t a new craft producer … at least, she’s not a big time producer of craft items…  she’s one of our chickens.

 Edna is a big old bird who lays mahoosive brown eggs of roughly 3″ tall – (too big to  fit into egg boxes – even the egg boxes from supermarkets which claim the enclosed eggs are ‘extra large’).  We only have two chickens now,  Edna, and Dorothy, and it’s a case of from the sublime to the ridiculous!

While Edna is the big, noisy old bird whose a rich, warm rusty colour,  Dorothy, on the other hand,  is a quiet, delicate looking, little thing, whose feathers are paler,  mottled, and fluffy, and she has feathered feet, so she looks like she’s wearing feathered slippers.  She’s a beautiful colour, and her eggs are darling and so little too – anything from half an inch to roughly an inch tall – and they’re a pretty blue colour.  They‘re very rich eggs, a little too rich for me.   She follows  dear Edna around as if Edna has her on a lead.  She also copies Edna…  When Edna does the BIG LOUD  “QUAAawwww, qwaw, qwaw, ack, ack, ack.” letting the world know that she’s about to lay an egg the size of a planet,  Dotty tries to copy her, but the noises she makes come out like a creaky little whisper:  “paw wah wah waah“.  You couldn’t get two more extreme birds.  But they do seem to love each other. Bless them.

When Edna goes into the hen house to lay her egg in one of the nest boxes,  Dorothy goes in with her and more often than not we can find them both snuggled together in a nest box,  keeping each other company while Edna lays her egg.  However … Mr. Cobs went looking for the two darlings a few days ago and found them in one nest box, but … Edna (big bird) was sat ON TOP of Dorothy!  Dotty must have gone into that particular nest box first, and Edna either went in to keep her company, or … she wanted to lay at the same time, and instead of choosing the nest box right next to Dotty, she clambered in and sat on top of her!  We were quite frankly suprised that Dotty wasn’t squished!

Edna, like all birds, loses feathers every now and again.  When she goes through a moult, she looks like a Mrs. Shabby Chic Clucker, than like a World Champion Sized Eggs Layer!  Any feathers she drops I squirrel away and use them when I know that something needs one of her feathery gifts.  This card needed a gift from Edna.  I did toy with putting one of her eggs on it but didn’t think the Post Office would approve of a scrambled egg letter ~ so you have the little spotted egg you see in the photo above.  (no, it’s not a real egg). lol.

A teeny tiny metal spoon,  so that you can eat your boiled egg with it.

 The title of this post is ‘Just for You, …  if you’d like it‘  and what I meant by that is that you could be the receiver of this card if you’d like to be.

I’ve never done a ‘give-away’ on my blog  (I’ve never been sure anyone would want anything to be honest, – and I’m still not now) …  but in the last few days I’ve seen a few blogs doing ‘give-aways’.  Not of cards, but rather knitted things like mug sleeves or sewn items like a make up bag etc, but it made me wonder if bloggers who made cards ever did a give-away for a handmade card.   I’d never seen any …  and this led me to think that maybe it might be something fun and something to make someone smile so my mind was made up.  I’d do a card ‘Give-Away!’

If you’re a follower of The Cobweborium Emporium blog, and would like to have your name ‘thrown into the hat’ and be in with a chance of receiving this card then please just leave a comment below with the word:  GIVEAWAY  – either at the start or the end of your comment.

To make sure that all is fair,  I’ll get the Random Number Generator to choose the number, and I’ll also do a screen shot of the R.N.G and post it so that you can all see which number was generated.

If you’re the ‘winner’, then you have a choice.  You can choose to have the card for yourself, in which case I’ll write the card to you, sign it and send it with love. Or …  you can choose to receive the card un-written, so that you can write it and send it to someone else.

But … If you don’t want to enter but still want to leave a comment or have a ‘coffee chat’ , then please do.  You really don’t have to get involved in a give-away.  It’s just a bit of September fun.  🙂  Any comment which doesn’t have the word ‘GIVEAWAY’ at the beginning or end of a comment won’t be entered and you must be a follower of the blog here to enter.

This give-away is open to anyone who is a follower of The Cobweborium Emporium blog – no matter where you live.  It’s not just for UK folks.  I’ll close the ‘give-away’ entries on Wednesday 21st September 2016, at 6pm UK time.  Only followers who have commented by that date and time, with the word ‘GIVEAWAY’ somewhere in their comment,  will be included.

NB:  Please  DON’T  put your real name or address in the comments box.  I need to look after your privacy and security.

Well it’s Sunday and I’m not normally a poster on Sundays, so this is something which feels kind of odd to me.  A nice odd though.  It feels kind of warm and fuzzy.  Friendly.  Fabulous.  Like I should be doing something normal, and instead I’ve been given time off to go and have a coffee with friends somewhere lovely. 

Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee with me. I love seeing you here and love chatting with you in comments too.  I’m so very blessed to know you all.

Have a wonderful day, whatever you’re doing.

 

 

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A great big Thank You – from a big friendly giant!

Morning/afternoon/evening –  all you lovely readers!  (And those who don’t feel that lovely but really are very lovely indeed!)

I’m here and I’m still crafting … but I’ve had to back track on a project. [insert sad face here].  My much-loved Grandson began his new ‘big school’ this week, and the teacher had given all these little ones (on their visit to the new school a couple of months ago), a little bucket, which she asked them to fill with ‘stuff’ related to things that happened during the summer weeks before they started school.

My daughter (his mummy) doesn’t get out as much as she’d like to, due to a medical problem which can keep her not exactly house bound, but it doesn’t allow her the sort of freedom to come and go as much as you and I have and so I guessed that filling the bucket might be somewhat of a problem.  So because of this I came up with the idea of making a little book/album and fill it with photo’s and mementoes of things that my Grandson did with us, his Grammy and Grandad, in the summer before big school. (Grammy and Grandad memories added to Mummy and Daddy memories would make up a selection of great memories for my Grandson to share at school).   And making & recording memories is what’s been keeping me busy for the last few weeks.  I’ve had tons of little things to do with this much-loved Grand-baby of mine (yes, I know he’s not ‘mine’, I have to share him with Mr. Cobs, and his Mummy and Daddy, and his other Grandparents, and his aunty and cousins ….and… and … on and on!,  but when he’s with me he’s all mine).

It was a fabulous little book and I was so pleased with the way it was coming together.  I’d planned that all the memories and photographs were going to be on large tags, which slotted into pockets which I’d built inside the book.  I showed the book to my little grandson a couple of weeks ago and he loved it.  It didn’t have the pictures in it at the time, I’d kept those to one side, but just wanted to show him the book – and I had the devil of a job getting the book back off him!  He wanted to keep it and take it home.  lol.  Oh! I’ve just thought! …  I perhaps should have told you that this darling, adorable little boy, who is just four and a half years old and the most incredible little chap who’s so easy to love,  was born with Cerebral Palsy.  It has affected his walking to some extent, and also left him a little behind educationally.  His understanding is about 18 to 24 months behind children of the same age as he is.

• I’m aware of how careful we should all be of our little ones, so instead of giving you his name, we’ll just call him little H here on the ‘net.
  

I’d almost finished the tag book, apart from a couple of photo’s and fixing a couple of feathers and an Oak leaf in place, when it turned out that his mommy decided that she didn’t want to use this book after all. [insert miserable face here].

I was at a loss about what to do with the tag book – it wasn’t at all big enough to use as a mini album, and I couldn’t make it bigger as the book itself was ‘made’ in full.  So after a couple of days of looking at it and trying to come up with ideas,  I decided that rather than lose the beautiful memories we’d made during the summer, I thought the best thing I could do was to de-construct it, and then build a proper mini album, and use what I had,  in a way which would make it feel like it had only ever been like it was in its new ‘form’.  So this is what’s keeping me busy and stopping me from keeping my blog up to date!  (Sorry about that.  Life!).

But … I thought I’d take this opportunity to share something I put together for this little chap (well, for his mum and daddy to be precise) – which was a Thank You card to all his nursery school teachers.

I had a Big Friendly Giant decoupage card – ‘un-constructed’ – in my stash for ages and never made it up.  And, well,  … I had a couple of days where I’d totally lost my mojo,  so I thought I’d get the mojo juices running by making up the découpage card.  Crafting something was better than just sitting there looking at my desk.

All the things needed to make up one card,  came inside this  ↑  handy wallet/envelope, from the makers of DoCrafts.

And this  ↑   is what it looks like when you unpack the contents of the wallet/envelope

It was easy as melting chocolate with a heat gun, to put together.  Just layer it all up.  So I did … and loved it when it was made, and just as I was popping the last element in place, the phone rang … it was my daughter on the phone.  We chatted for a while then I said that I’d made this card …..  and she said she needed a card to thank everyone at the Nursery School.  She’d got cards for the teachers who had the most to do with little H, but she wanted one bigger card for a general Thank You, to everyone.

I looked at the BFG card and had an idea.  I could turn this card into a thank you card easy peasy.  So I did.

If you click on this photograph  ↑  it will open up into a much bigger picture so that you can see it and all its layers.  But … it’s not quite finished, so remember to click back to see the finished article.

I cut some flag bunting using a die, in four colours of gingham card:  Biscuit;  Baby Blue, Teal Blue and Pink, and mixed up the colours so that the bunting was a combination of all four colours.   I die cut some alphabet letters to spell out the words ‘Thank You’, which I then mounted onto the flags and finally added some buttons, blue ribbon (to be the ‘book mark’) and a little card rosette with a button at the centre, for the top of the front.

And that, as they say, was all there was to it.  But I loved the way it turned out.  Just shows you that you can change a découpage card ‘kit’ to make it fit the occasion you want it to fit.

So … that’s me talked out, now it’s over to you.  What have you been up to?  Done anything nice that you want to share?  Been somewhere lovely?  Or just want to have a general chat?  I’m in favour of anything you want to say.  Say it in a comment below and I promise to answer.

In the mean time …  Have a truly blessed day.

Sending love ~

🎼 ♩ ♫ Daisy, ♫ Daisy ♩ ♫ ♪ . . .

. . . .  ‘give me your answer do.  I’m half crazy …..’  . . . .  come along now.  join in!

Aw what are you like?!!  What a place to leave me hanging! – “I’m half crazy”  indeed!  Mind you,  it’s about right.  fnar, fnar.

Well, since last we met for coffee together,  many things have taken place here at the Cobweborium, amongst them:

• I had a Birthday.
• Mr. Cobs had a Birthday (it’s jealousy. He’s copying me.  He does it every year! pfft.);
• My littlest furry purry puddy-tat has been in a fight with we know not what or who, but the end result is a chewed ear, injuries on the top of her head and under her poor little neck.  However – she’s now proficient at detecting me approaching her by stealth, whilst holding cotton wool with antiseptic on it in order to bathe said injuries.  Boy oh boy can she MOVE!
• . . . and . . . my craft room computer died.  The Beast is deaded.  Totally.  Even the computer whizz kid son-in-law failed to give it the kiss of life.  I sat for days, in misery, mourning the loss of this wonderful machine.  It was the best computer I’d ever had.  SUPER DUPER fast – it knew what I wanted and had found the page before I’d finished typing the words in the search bar.  But …  brace yourself,  here’s the stoopid  …  I hadn’t backed up my stuff. [sigh – yes I know what you’re thinking because I’ve already thought it myself].  I’ve lost everything.  All my photo’s of family and friends, and pictures of things I’d made, and stuff I was working on.  Stuff for my albums, waiting for me to decorate up.  All gone.  There is a very small chance that I might be able to recover some things – and I will get some investigation done into that possibility.

I’ve now got a new computer which is an OK(ish) machine – but it’s not The Beast.  I’m loading things onto it and fiddling with it, trying to make it work for me in the way I like a computer to work.  I’m sure I’ll probably love it, one day, eventually, however, for now, it’s just a piece of machinery and I’m trying to make friends with it.

Anyway, – that’s what’s been happening in my corner of the forest –  and you’re not here to read about that, you’re here to see something crafty orientated, so I shall zip the lip and share some photographs of a card I made to keep myself out of mischief.

The Daisy, Daisy card

I started with white cardstock, cut & scored – but didn’t fold straight away, so making it easier to work on a flat surface. (This is to be an Easel Card – so an extra score line is added at the half-way mark on what is going to be the front of the card.).   I used some papers for the background which I’ve had in my stash for a good while, and printed out various bits from a CD Rom: Shabby Chic by Katy Sue – (I used the daisy set on the cd).

I fussy cut some of the daisies and a ‘postage stamp’, so that I could give depth and dimension to the card.

 Top tip  for fussy cutting:  Buy a DECENT pair of manicure scissors and use those instead of regular scissors.  The blades curve at the bottom and so you don’t end up cutting into your image.  You can hold the scissors curving in, or out – so can use them according to the ‘bit’ you’re cutting.

I got to work sticking and fixing. I ‘built’ the front of the card on a separate piece of 6″x6″ card stock, which matched the exact size of the card, but was flat and totally un-scored.

I added some cream cotton lace, in two designs and two paper doilies, and also cut a piece of grey/blue card stock, just a little larger than the postcard size, and embossed all around the edge, in a sort of scratchy, scruffy way. in gold embossing powder – in order to pick up the warm lemon shades in the papers, and also to give a nod to some Stickles, which you’ll see I’ve used, a little later.

In the ‘assembly’ stage, I added, from my stash,  some blue twine, buttons, a little wooden blue frame (from Docrafts),  and some paper butterflies cut from old book pages.

Once everything was in place, I then mounted this now made ‘front of card’ to the card itself.  But glued it only to the bottom half (below the score line I mentioned earlier) of the front of the card – in order for it to be an Easel Card.

I added Stickles – in a warm yellowy orange colour, to the centres of all the daisies (see the photo above) – to make them ‘ping’.  Once dry, it was time to work on the inside of the card.

Then, using some of the ‘daisy’ backing paper, again from the CD Rom,  I loaded it into Photoshop and copied and pasted a yellow based postcard [from the cd] onto the daisy paper.  I wanted a postcard so that the ‘greeting’ could be written on it, but I didn’t want to add depth, so doing it this way worked perfectly – as you see below: (you can click on any of the photos here and they’ll open up big size so that you can see them better)

To the bottom (roughly) third of the inside I added a strip of mottled card – again printed from the cd, but this time I fixed it in place with foam tape, so that when the easel card was opened, it would give the front of the card somewhere to buff up against, and keep it open.

The blue ribbon is rayon seam binding, the button was from my stash, and the beautiful white butterfly is actually an embroidered one, which  [I think]  I bought very cheaply from The Works (Britain’s leading discount book store – which also sells a variety of crafty things, amongst other ‘stuff’).

Yay …. an easel card is born!  Now to make a box for it to go into….

A matching daisy box – but with a difference.  I concentrated on more yellow tones for the box so that it ‘talked’ to the card, but was just different enough to make it special in its own way.  (Actually … after taking this photo above, I added a few more fussy cut postage stamps to the box, sprinkled around, in different sizes – which I felt gave the box a little more character).

Well, that’s me done and dusted.  What about you?  What have you been making or doing in the last three or so weeks?  If you’ve made a post on your blog that I’ve missed, then please add a comment to this blog post with a link to your creativeness (be it crafty or ‘bakey’, or written word) so that I can get straight to it and have a good ol’ read/look!  (And other readers can come and visit your blog too!)

Thank you SO much for coming and sharing a bit of your time with me.  I am, as always, very grateful to you for coming and when I say ‘thank you’ to you here, I really do mean it.

Sending love and squidges your way ….

Happy Anniversary!

Well my goodness, it’s been quiet around this blog for the last month, hasn’t it!  I won’t bore you with the details, suffice to say:  Life sometimes gets in the way and it can take up valuable crafting time.  How dare it! 

“What a darn cheek”, I hear you say.   I agree.  How VERY dare it, indeed!

I’ve been trying to fit a little crafting time in, and one of the things which was on the list of ‘To Do’, was an anniversary card for my truly lovely neighbours.  Big M  (aka Mr. Cobs)  learnt that they were going on a fabulous holiday to celebrate their wedding anniversary, so he shared the news with me and of course … I instantly went into ‘must make a card’ mode, and this, dear readers, is what this lovely blog post is about.

I’ll put in as many details as possible in case this card inspires you to make something similar for someone you know.  But if I leave anything out, please feel free to ask in a comment.  Comments are moderated (to delete ‘spam’ before it gets onto the blog) – so your ‘question’ or comment won’t appear on the blog straight away.  But I will reply asap, I promise, cross my heart, hold up my pinky finger and say “Honour Bright”.  (yerrsss….  Shirley Temple was a part of my growing up.  My mother loved the films).

Anyway … let’s get on with it, shall we?

The ‘base’ card I used was a 5×5″ ready scored card (by Craftwork Cards), in a beautiful soft biscuit colour, with white polka dots.  I began by cutting half of the front of the card off, diagonally, and then on the reverse of the cut off piece of card, I sprayed it with plain cold water from a very fine mist spray.  I let the water penetrate the card and after a moment or two, I curled the card round a little tube, to give it that lovely curve you see in the photograph above.  If you do this – hold the card there for a moment, to kind of ‘set’ the curve and give it a memory of where you want it to be.  Then set it on one side to dry while you get your papers chosen and cut to size.

For this project I chose papers from Docrafts ‘Papermania’ in their Parisienne Blue range.  The doily is also from this range.  I cut a 12×12 into 6″ squares, then cut one square diagonally, and also cut a doily in the same way.

I fixed the triangle of paper and the doily to the curved piece of card first, (you might find this easier to do if you drape the curved card over the edge of your desk and work with it that way),  then fixed a 6×6 sheet of the paper to the card, as shown.

I attached the curve back onto the card again, and using strong red tape, I taped it down to the front of the card. I then punched two holes through the curved piece of card, and the card front (now attached, beneath it) and then ensured the curve stayed exactly where I wanted it to be by using a tie of thin organza ribbon through the punched holes.

My attention then turned to the back, and I made a card stand for the back, so that the wallet card would stand up when it was finished.  (Imagine a school photograph, which has one of those stiff fold out bits on the reverse, enabling you to stand the photo up without a frame.  The card stands I make are the same sort of thing).  I then finally fixed the ‘loose’ front in place, along the inner bottom, thereby creating a wallet style card.

I added some metal, vintage style corners in place, using some strong glue and my craft clamps.  (Bought some time ago from The Range for next to nothing.  I HIGHLY recommend them!)

Corners fixed in place and not moving, ….  then came the fun stuff!

The Roses came from my stash.  I buy flowers anywhere I find them.  If I see flowers which I know would work perfectly on cards (or albums etc), I buy them straight away.  Finding the right flowers when you need them can be a task and a half sometimes, so I try to have a selection already in the craft room so that I have them when I need them.

The roses I chose for this card are a kind of delicate to touch, silky flowers and I fell in love with them because of their softly folded petals and the way they curled at the edges.   I tucked them into the curve of the card and added silky green leaves wherever I thought they were needed.

I made a big bow using some wide, pretty blue Organza and added a satin ribbon from the Parisienne Blue range on top, to layer,  and also tie the biscuity colour of the card into the ribbons, and finally, I added a large rose to the centre of the ribbons and fixed it in place.

Next came the tags which I wanted to tuck into the pocket.  I used some beautiful royalty free images and also stamped a ‘post card’  onto some card, then vintaged it up using a warm brown ink pad and duster brush.

All around the edges of the tags I kind of sprinkly, embossed some very fine, golden embossing powder to give them a bit of pizzazz.  The stamped message that you can just about see on the tag behind the postcard above reads: 

Marriage
1. A legal commitment to live as
husband and wife
2. Wedlock
3. A close and intimate association
4. A pledge.

Which kind of sums it all up in a few words, doesn’t it?.  I loved it!  It was perfect for this tag.

And finally …  this card would never have fit into a regular envelope, so I made it a matching box, which I lined with contrasting papers from the same Papermania Parisienne Blue range …

The card was ready and waiting for my neighbours when they came home from their holiday.

Thank you so much for coming and spending some time with me.  I’m sorry that it’s been a bit quiet around here, Thank you to those of you who so kindly kept me in your prayers and sent me messages.  You touched my heart in so many ways and kept me plodding along.  Thank you.  I want to say I love you, for it.  And I do – but not in a creepy way you understand!    . . . aw, you know what I mean.  (chuckling to myself here).

Have a truly blessed rest of your day.  I hope your weekend is fabulous and that the sun shines warm upon your face  …. just not so hot that it melts you though!

Heaps of love and squishy stuff …