Recycle, Re-use, Reduce

I have made this card for my Mother-in-law for Mothering Sunday which was nice and simple using an all-in-one decoupage kit from Cuddly Buddly. Everything is there so you can just print out, cut out and assemble. I see this as the "Ready Meal" of the craft world. Although I love to cook, sometimes I just want to eat something tasty without having to work too hard. Thus I have made this lovely card without too much effort, I just added some pink chiffon ribbon and a little bit of bling to make it "mine". It comes with a selection of four matching sentiments and I was wondering what to do with the surplus three (Thank You, Happy Birthday and With Love) when I remembered that my Mother-in-law had told me how she had reused my cards in the past by cutting off the front and using them as notecards so it occurred to me that I could give them to her so she could extend the life of the card. I will put a bit of double sided tape on the back of each sentiment and print off an extra insert so she can give it a new lease of life. Thrifty or what? I know she's going to like the idea. There is a new Easter Card in the same format at CB that I have got my eye on. Watch this space.

Little Boxes

I had a couple of inexpensive presents I wanted to give to people but I wanted them to look a bit more special than the contents really warranted, so I made these fabulous origami boxes following a video tutorial by Kristina. It is so clear that even a bumbling buffoon like me can make something cute. I have followed the instructions exactly for the first one (except that I used 12" x 12" paper for the lid, and not 11 1/2") The only quibble I have with the tutorial is that
I found it tricky to put the stapler in such a position to fasten the ribbon neatly so for the second box I bored a hole through the lot with my pokey tool and secured the whole lot with a pretty flower shaped brad, but as previously mentioned I am a fumble fingered fool so probably anyone else would be able to manoeuvre the stapler with aplomb! So, Marmite do you love it or hate it? I hate it but couldn't resist buying this special edition Champagne flavoured Marmite for my daughter for Valentine's Day. She loves Marmite and although we Brits generally save Valentine's cards and presents for those we love romantically, rather than bombarding all and sundry with cards and such as seems to happen in other countries, I thought it was too good a chance to show my baby girl how much I love her.

The second blue and green box was to put in some Travel sweets for a gentleman who turned 89 years old recently. He had been bemoaning the fact that you couldn't seem to get Travel sweets anymore so I set out on a mission to get some and managed to find the ones pictured
and also some Barley sugar ones for him. Not a wildly extravagant present but he was chuffed with them and that's what counts. I was pretty chuffed that I found some ribbon that matched the paper of the lid so well. These perfect crafting moments are few and far between for me.

Learning from my mistakes!

I made a series of Thank You cards for myself too, and although they didn't turn out quite how I'd envisaged them, I am rather pleased with the outcome. As you can tell I love Pink Petticoat papers and normally if I was making A6 cards I would print off an A4 sheet, cut in two and fold to make two cards out of one pattern sheet. The pattern sheet I chose however was designed in such a way that I thought it would be a shame to cut it in two as it would spoil the flow of the design, so I decided to cut my card to A5 size first and print the whole design, just smaller. It wasn't until I had cut all my card and loaded in the printer that I discovered that printing at A5 wasn't an option so I had to choose the nearest size to it, which left a bare stripe down the right hand side of the card, which when folded would be at the bottom. I thought about cutting the white bit off but then I thought it would look nice with the "Thanks" sentiment rubber stamped there in black ink, it was just perfect. Each card had a different PP Christmas image stamp punched out, matted on a larger circle of turquise pearlised card and finally matted onto a white scallop which I edged with matching turquoise ink. It was very quick to churn out half a dozen cards, much quicker than it took me to write this convoluted explanation.

Thank You Cards

I whipped up these cards on Boxing day for my daughter to write her Christmas Thank Yous. They are all variations in a theme using the Lola's Bodoir collection from Pink Petticoat . I was rather pleased with them I have to say.

Here's a better look at my favourite one of the series

Super - Doopah Light show

You might have to click the button twice to get the video going

Last Wednesday I met my friend Ailsa in town so we could have a mooch round the new Cath Kidson shop that has opened there. It's all lovely stuff but bit too pricey for my liking. For example they had hot wheat bags at £18 - I have been pricing them because I had a slight accident with mine recently (I had gone to bed and was feeling a bit chilly so called down to my husband who was still downstairs to ask him to pop it in the microwave for me, and just lobbed it over the bannisters. The bag split, there was wheat all over the shop and the subsequent vacuuming warmed me up sufficiently that I no longer required the hot wheat bag) Anyway hot wheat bags anywhere else are about £6, so I maintain my position that CK are a bit pricey.

We then went and had tea and cakes in "The Mock Turtle" which is a wonderful old fashioned teashop with homemade cakes, proper tea in a brown betty teapot (tea leaves, strainer,the lot) It is a wonderful experience but not to be repeated too frequently as it is hazardous to the waistline.
We then trotted a long to the new(ish) library because Ailsa hadn't ever seen it which is where this post becomes relevant to my card blog. I bought the card in the video for my niece who has her 6th birthday tomorrow. I was going to make her one but thought that this looked far more fun - a bit pricey at £4.50 bt worth it for the novelty I think. I did make a card withmy craft robo using a pattern from the Just Cutters CD, for my daughter to give her but the photo doesn't show it off to its best advantage, and it has been posted now so no time to re-shoot. Please excuse the background noise to the vid, I had the telly blaring away watching "Grand Designs" and the strange noise at the end is a creaking floorboard as I walked across to turn off the camera!

Snowmen

I was fortunate enough to receive several handmade cards this past Christmas although I didn't manage to make that many myself despite my best intentions. These two arrived on the same day and both feature a snowman image and the same ice blue colour palette. The one above is from Angela and the one below from Linda.They are both fabulous - I wish I could come up with such beautiful cards.

Cheque Mate!

I needed to make the rather boring cheque we gave to our 16 year old niece for Christmas look a bit more glamorous , so I printed a Pink Petticoat design on one side of a piece of card (not shown here) and a Christmas Lola image stamp(also by PP) on the other side that I had coloured in PSP and "glittered up" a bit with some stickles. I folded the card into three and cut out a scallop shape with a punch so that Lola could peep through, and doodled around the edge of the cut-out. After popping the cheque inside with a greeting, I wrapped ribbon around the outside to fasten and added yet another little PP image stamp, again coloured in PSP. Et voilà - a gift!