A Day Out

Had a day out in West Kirby Sunday before last, haven't been there for years. It was a beautiful day (for a change), and I took quite a lot of pictures. As it turns out it came in quite handy as I found the Secret Crafter's Saturday challenge last weekend, where the theme was "A Day Out" - perfect!

One of my favourite things at the moment is merging photographs with "cute" digi stamps, so I set to work with Photoshop and came up with a few pictures. I was going to make them into a card, but the cuties were going to end up too small, so I changed my plan and came up with a little booklet. I printed out the cover on my inkjet printer, then put it through my laser printer for the words, which I then foiled through my laminator. I printed out all the pages, then coloured the cuties with my ProMarkers (can't live without them!). I have a Bind-it-All, which I have had for a couple of years, and hardly used - in fact my husband has used it more than me - so I got it out and had a go at binding the booklet together. The binding rings I have were probably too big for the booklet, but it was a good learning experience!

Here are pictures of the finished article -

A REALLY Challenging Challenge!!

Well this really did prove to be a challenge. Over at Crafty Cardmakers they have a challenge called "A Challenging Challenge", the idea of which is to create a card either using something bought, stashed and never used, or something not done because you are scared of it.......... you get the idea?

Well, I had seen Vix's See Through Easel Card and wanted to have a go, but kept putting it off, so I thought now was the time. I cut the frame and the card on my Pazzles Inspiration (Polly), she is such a good friend! I also persuaded Polly to cut the scrolls (they are from a Pazzles disk which I have had for ages and not used!). The image is a digi stamp from Dewdrop Craftz called Butterfly Spiral. I printed her on acetate, using my laser printer, then foiled her using the laminator (another technique that I am just trying out). I have glittered parts on the back of the acetate, and for the dress I used my quickie glue pen and gold leaf flakes. Not sure that she shows up as well as she could on the picture, it is quite hard to photograph something which is, in the main, transparent.

I used some background paper with butterflies on from the Spring book from Crafty Individuals, die cut and glittered a butterfly for the stopper, and added a greeting. I thought it needed just a bit of something else, so added the stick on jewels around the frame.

I am also entering this into Stampalot Challenge April which has the theme of "Fantasy", think this might fit, and would love to win the Fabulous prize of a Cricut machine!

Here are two more pictures.

March ATC swaps - Spring theme

Well, managed to get all the swaps done and put in the post, and we are still in the first full week in April! Here are the offerings for this theme -

Yet another great bunch of ATCs!

An Easter Card

I have never made or sent an Easter Card before, but I received one from my Dad's cousin so I decided to make one to send back to her. I have recently made contact with Barbara because of our mutual interest in family history.
I am very much into tent cards at the moment, so I thought it would be nice to make one with a cross aperture. I have had the cross design for a while, and until now have just cut crosses to use as embellishments, but thought it would be good to adapt it to make the card with.
I made a second (plain) cross around the original so that the aperture would be slightly bigger than the cross, and I cut the same plain cross in silver holographic card to mount the cut out cross onto. I was quite pleased with the result, and this morning got a text from Barbara to say she loved it (however, she was more pleased with the 3 death certificate copies I enclosed with it - that's genealogy for you!)
I am entering this into the Papertake Weekly Challenge which this week is Anything Goes. I thought about putting it into Crafty Cardmakers, which is Spring has Sprung, but I am not sure that it says Spring, so maybe I won't.