🎼 ♩ ♫ Daisy, ♫ Daisy ♩ ♫ ♪ . . .

Daisy1 copy. . . .  ‘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

1

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.

2

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.

3

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.

4

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)

5

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’).

8 copy

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

7

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).

6

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 ….

Coffee Sig

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Sunday Arrivals!

 On Platform 1 A Beautiful BOY!   

  On Platform 2A Gorgeous GIRL!  

Two beautiful new souls to cherish and love!

On reading one of the blogs I follow, I found out that one the writers of a blog, who had been MIA (Missing In Action) for a couple of weeks,  had a very good reason for being away from her computer:  She’d had a baby! A beautiful, baby girl!  After congratulations had been said I thought that it would be a lovely thing to make a baby card for the mommy and her new bundle of love and scrumptiousness, so I sat at my desk and gave it a bit of thought.

The first thought I came up with was that if I was going to make a card for a new baby girl, then to be totally fair, I should also make one for a little boy too.  So here I am again, sharing (this time) two cards for the price of one!

I decided on Beatrix Potter –  Beatrix holds a big place in my heart – so made two very different cards, but around the same ‘theme’.

Firstly  Just arrived  –  On platform 1:   A New Baby Boy.

New Baby Boy 1

Made on a 6″x6″ white, pre-scored & folded card by Papermania I love their cardstock – 300gsm weight – so it will take practically anything you ask it to.  The backing paper is from a range of Beatrix Potter papers & toppers which I actually got free with a magazine over a year ago, and hadn’t used at all (I think, because I loved them so much,  I wanted to keep them!)  When I went through the papers I fell instantly in love with this backing paper and knew it was going to be the basis of the New Baby Boy card.

The Gingham Check card which I used to mat and layer behind the Hunca Munca, cradling her baby, topper, is from a range by Anna Marie Designs.

New Baby Boy 2

I added the fabulous ‘New Baby‘  duckling tag and then chose some ribbon to match the card.  In the photographs the ribbon for some reason looks lighter than it is in real life.  I think it’s possibly the way the flash on the camera caught the satin of the ribbon and washed out the colour a little.  Little blue bow applied to the top left hand corner.  I then added a strip along the bottom of the card of Potter paper ribbon, and then resting just along the top of that I added a blue blossom twig (again by Anna Marie Designs)  to represent a branch, to which I knew I wanted to add a little metal, antiqued bird house (which has a baby bird perched up on the roof – which you sadly can’t quite see  properly in the photo).

The bird house has a hanging loop on top which was too ‘tough’  for me to snip off with my jewellery tools, so I added a tiny bit of ribbon through the loop and tucked the ends under the New Baby topper, gluing them in place with a dab of Anita’s all-purpose.

Of course – me being me, I had to take the decoration into the inside of the card….

New Baby Boy 3

I added a pale blue insert to which I added a matching blue ribbon at the top of the page, and at the bottom I added a tiny topper which had daisies, grass and leaves on it, and it just finished off the card nicely.

~ ~ ~  Just arrived on Platform 2:  ~ ~ ~

A Gorgeous Baby Girl

The new baby girl who began my thought of making a baby card was born on the 9th July 2014 and her name is Alea Francesca.  (You’ll find a link to the momma’s blog at the bottom of the page).

Because I had Alea in mind, I felt as if I ‘knew’ who I was making this card for and ….  well I just went to town on the whole girliness!

New Baby Girl 1

Again made on a 6″x6″ 300gsm card, by Papermania.  To which I added a 6×6″ piece of pink with white polka dots card (by Anna Marie Designs).   I added a small paper doily (Dovecraft) – which I actually stuck to the card with foam tape, as I wanted it to be raised slightly from the card so that I could add flowers which where kind of tucked under the doily.

I’d already chosen the topper that I wanted to use – Mrs. Rabbit and her baby bunnies – but I wanted to give it a little more importance – so chose a frame from a selection by Trimcraft (their Santoro range).  I cut some pink, gingham check card (Anna Marie Designs) to fit the back of the frame exactly, and mounted the topper onto that then fixed it to the frame using Anita’s all-purpose glue.

The addition of the ‘Congratulations’ gave the card it’s sentiment.

New Baby Girl 3

Then it was time to fix some flowers.  All the flowers you see are all paper flowers.  I’ve had them all for  . . .  – ohhh,   yonks!  I use paper flowers all the time so used to buy a pack of them every time I did any crafty shopping, consequently I don’t currently have to ever buy any – and probably won’t for a while!  But paper flowers are pretty much generic so any you have would likely work if you’re hoping to make a card ‘like’ this one for yourself.

New Baby Girl 1a

To the bigger flowers I added a button for a centre and sprinkled a tiny amount of glitter dust so that it would stick to the glue which popped up through the button holes.  To the smaller Blossom flowers which had no ‘centre’, I added a teeny flat-back pearl in a colour which matched or complimented the colour of the flower (flat back pearls by Anita’s – the Gemstone Pearl Wheel).  Other blossoms came with their own stamen centre.

The pink and white popcorn type of flowers (look above the Congratulations topper – just above the blossoms there) are by Anna Marie Designs.

Then came the butterflies.  With all those flowers there just HAD to be butterflies!

I’ve had a big bag of plain coloured butterflies in my stash for about 8 years and never used even one of them.  I don’t know where I got them from or why,  and I actually put them in a box to go to the charity shop, along with a few other crafty things which I wasn’t using.  However, I got them back out again because I wanted paper butterflies for this card.  So I chose colours and sizes and then stamped a butterfly on top of the card shape in order to give them the correct butterfly markings.  I creased and folded them a little to give them ‘flight’, and then used Anita’s 3D Clear Gloss to give them all a glossy coating – as if I’d clear embossed them a couple of times (only without the pitting which you can sometimes get by doing that).  

butterflies1

I couldn’t catch this glossy coating properly in a photograph.  I either got ‘white out’ – where you couldn’t see the butterfly at all, or nothing.  So you’ll just have to imagine a photo of the whole card showing the butterflies with their glossy shine!   But I did manage a ‘montage’ of the butterflies from the gazillion I took while I was trying to capture one whole ‘good’ photo – so this montage kind of shows that the butterflies did have this lovely glossy accent.

Birdhouse Baby

The addition of some really lovely warm, rosy pink ribbon and a little antiqued, metal bird house completed the front of the card.

Inside … I just simply added one tiny thing …New Baby Girl 2

…  a silver star, right at the top of the pink insert.  Is it because the new baby is a star?  Is it a wish star?  It’s a star which will have meaning to the new mummy and daddy – and to the baby as she grows up and looks back over her baby cards.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, are the two arrivals at Platforms 1 and 2, todayNot by train, you understand.  No no.  As is the tradition in all new babies, they came by Storknaturally!  😀

Thank you so much for reading, looking and for visiting,  but before you stop reading:   can I just please just give you a link to the blog I referred to up in my post above – so that you can see the wonderful new life which is the little girl who started off my thinking of Baby Cards.

Please click to visit the blog and if you can …  leave a comment of congratulations for the new mommy.  After all – we all love acknowledgements on something we’ve done which we’ve worked on, and I can think of no finer thing in life than a new baby, which someone has worked extremely hard on producing (and then some!)  and can think of no better thing on which to receive congratulations.

http://artatzazuta.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/celebrating-life-2/

Thank you SO much for taking the time out of your day to come and visit.  I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your kindness, your support and your friendship.  For those of you who follow me – thank you.   For those who don’t but are visiting:  Click to ‘Follow Me’!  What have you got to lose?  You won’t be sent loads of rubbish or spam.  You’ll just get an email to let you know when I’ve made a post on my blog  so that you don’t miss amything.  No spamNothing which asks you your date of birth or even your location!   All you have to do is put your email address into the space provided so that the system knows who to send the email to.

Have a truly, blessed Sunday all. 

Sending you love, smiles and joy ~

Cobs siggy sml

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