Kaisercraft stamps

I have purchased quite a few different Kaisercraft clear stamp set off Ebay lately and I have been looking for an excuse to try out the stamps. I choose "These days" stamp set as I really like the big corner rose. I stamped it onto white card stock and then layered it with red card stock . Stamped the rose stamp in the left hand corner with a Happy Birthday sentiment as well. Coloured the rose in with the Red colours in the Spectrum Noir Markers. 3 red pearls and a faux stitching border completed the front.

This is for a very special friend visiting in the UK at the moment.

Thank you for looking

My brother

Greetings, Its my brothers Birthday on the 31st December but I have to post off to South Africa again so that is why the card has been made so early. As is I am not sure if I have enough time for it to arrive in time - with the festive season on our tales. Richard, my brother, is a very keen fishermen and golf player and with my Mum making him a fisherman themed Birthday card I figured I would go with the golf theme.

The stamp is from the Sullivan's Men stamp set coloured with Spectrum Noir markers - the patterned papers are both from the My Minds Eye 29th Street Market Designer collection and the white golf ball has been embossed with Cuttlebug "Seeing spots" embossing folder. A bit of red and white string and 5 red pearls complete the card.

Thank you for looking

Happy 40th Birthday

A friend of mine is turning the big 40 this week and I have made her a card for her birthday as well as a Birthday Calendar album. I came up with this idea from the Card Organizer tutorial at Splitcoaststampers but changed it to make it more of a notebook style album. My friend is always texting me asking if she has the right day for birthdays so I figured it would be the perfect present for her.

Here is the link for the tutorial at Splitcoaststampers:

http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/card_organizer/

and you will find the printable PDF file of the calendar months in the tutorial .

The roses are handmade from white cardstock, stamped with red brick tim holtz ink and a script stamp and then edged with the same colour ink. The background for the Birthday Calendar is also the same ink and script stamp.

Thank you for looking and please leave comments!!

More Invitations

It is with huge disappointment that I tell you all that the invitations I cut out and posted to South Africa for my nieces 21st Burlesque theme party have still not arrived - 6 weeks and 2 days later. Its crunch time on getting these invites out so I have had to re-cut 30 invites with tags to start all over again. However this time I decided on a different pattern for the corset and keep in mind that I have only cut out the parts for each invitation and sending it on to Shanna to decorate and complete.

 This photo is without the tag inside it. She wants to have red or silver ribbon to lace up the corset but I have used black ribbon because I did not have enough red ribbon.

This is with the corset tag inside.

Thank you for looking

Matchbox dresser

Last weeks "Weekly Inkling" at Splitcoaststampers is the "Matchbox dresser" and I loved the idea. With a birthday coming up and jewellery as the gift I figured it would be a really nice way to present the gift then a the normal gift box or bag.

If you are interested the link to see the original tutorial is here:

http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/matchboxdresser/

You are meant to use match box's but if you do not have the match box's then there is a tutorial in the one above giving you the measurements and instructions to make your own box's. I did not have the match box's so I used the tutorial to make my own box's.

Square box four sides with 6 draws on each side totaling 24 draws. I also could not find the metal Tim Holtz  handles and used wooden pushpins instead. I  bought a necklace and matching ear rings as the gift and had the velvet bags hanging out of the draws with a note saying "Open me"

 The other side also with a bag hanging out the one draw saying "Open me"

View from the top.

Please leave comments and let me know if you like or not

Thank you for looking

Valerie

Album gift

I decided to make my friends daughter an album using the photo's taken at her 21st  tea party and have been busy with this for about 2 weeks now. Each page of the album is a different shape - keeping with the tea party theme. But I have never done one of these before and I found it rather ...... I want to say "difficult" but it was not difficult - may be different!! Cannot find the words to describe this project really but I still enjoyed ever moment.

I had left over items from the invitations and thank you gifts which I have tried to bring into the album but I really wanted to stick to more photos than decorations. Not sure what she is going to think but I quite like the end result:

Let me know what you think!!

 There is a teabag holder in the teapot on the above picture which was used in the Thank you tea bag holders

 The stained glass window in the picture above is done with acetate, spectrum noir markers and alcohol blending liquid. Also the yellow roses are left over roses from the invitations.

 The thank you stamp on the cupcake page is also from the Thank you tea bag holders

Thank you for looking and please come back later this week, I am busy with another project - also a gift - matchbox dresser - only I have made my own boxes instead of using the match box's.

See you then

Anniversary

Greetings to all. Tomorrow is my 19th Wedding Anniversary and I am so blessed to have the wonderful husband I have. We met in 1988 a few weeks before my 16th Birthday and have been together ever since. Now no marriage is perfect but when I look back on all those years its the happy times that stand out far more than the hard tough times. Immigrating to another country is really hard emotionally and physically but I think the stress that it puts on relationships is probable the hardest to recover from and that is proved with the divorce rates of immigrants. However, for my husband and myself, we both feel that this has brought us even closer than before, which makes us extremely blessed. But to get back to my anniversary, I make my husband a card every year for our anniversary and this year I have decided not to go the traditional wedding themed cards but to have a little bit of fun with my Spectrum Noir markers. At this stage I only have 7 of the 12 sets of 6 markers. I have bought the other 5 sets and a set of the 24 light markers in the UK which my friend Debbie will be bringing back for me. This restricts me with colours but I am still having so much fun playing around with it. My colouring is no where near good but I am really happy with the results so far. Practice makes perfect and thats exactly what I will keep doing!!

Thank you for looking

Linkin Park Birthday card CD

Its my nephews Birthday on the 4th December and his favourite band is Linkin Park. He has just seen a live concert in Cape Town South Africa so I figured that I would use it as the theme for his Birthday card.

I decided on a plastic CD cover and figured I would work around this. I found a few logo's on the internet - so many to choose from but finally decided to use three elements of design and put them together. Went black, blue and silver in colour and I think it really looks like it could be one of their CD covers. There is no cd in the case as I used a slimline cover so there is just enough space for the card inside.

Sorry the photos are not great but the light from the window and the glare from the plastic cover made it really difficult to get a clear picture.

Thank you for looking and any comments would be much appreciated

Burlesque Birthday card

Greetings to all, just received news that the parcel I sent over to South Africa with the Burlesque themed party decorations has arrived safely and all in tact. Now I have to wait for January to see it all put together.But in the meantime I have been working on my nieces 21st Birthday card and I figured I would keep it simple and in line with what  have already done for her party. The design is very similar to the other 21st Birthday card I made earlier this month for a friends daughter.

Thank you for looking

Update on the Spectrum Noir Storage

Greetings all, the storage stand for my Spectrum Noir pens has taken far longer than what I anticipated due to each shelf having to be glued in place and left to dry. It is not complete at this stage but all the shelves are in place however some of the shelves have moved and are no longer straight. Does not effect the usage of the shelves however. At this stage you can see the glue on the backing and there is finger marks on all the shelves but I am extremely happy on how it is turning out. My husband wants to paint the entire stand to make it look better as well but for the time being I have put in some pens and some of my favourite ink pads  to show you the idea I had.

There is lots of space to grow my pen collection but not much space left for my ink pads. The pens colours I can clearly see but the ink pads are majority black so I can not see which colour is which. I have decided to name each one with a label but need to go and buy a refill for my label maker before I can do that. So there is still some work to be done before this will be done. Now I cannot wait for my other pens to arrive. Pity its only in January!!!!

See ya!!

Egg Shell Technique

One of the latest "Weekly Inklings" at Splitcoaststampers was a mosiac technique using egg shells. Yes you read right - EGG SHELLS. Now its quite a long drawn out technique so its not something that you will be able to use if you need a quick card.

Follow the link below to see the tutorial:

http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/eggshellmosaicbackground/

So I have been looking for an excuse to try out this technique but only have brown alcohol ink so had to go brown on this one. I also decided to try it and if I liked the outcome would use it on a card. Well not absolutely blown away with my attempt but happy enough to use on a project. I can see the possibilities if you had more colours to work with. Stained glass windows, water if using blues and greens and so many others!!

But to get back to the project - its my in-laws anniversary in 3 weeks time and I have used it on a card for them. Got to get it in the post to South Africa:

The daisies on the card are also handmade and if you want the tutorial on how to make these go to:

http://www.stampingwithloll.com/p/tutorials.html

See ya!!

Another Card

In my previous post I mentioned that I was making Birthday cards for a brother and sister that share a birth date and I posted photos of the card I had made for the girl.

Well its no secret that I struggle with boys or mens cards but I do try and bring in each persons personality into what I am making. I had three options for things that he would like on this card and they are:

• motorbikes
• DC clothing brand
• guitars and the band  U2

Last year I made a card using a silhouette of Bono, who is the lead singer of U2 so I wanted to stay away from the music theme this year. That left me with motorbikes or the DC logo. I decided to use both and see if I could bring them together and make it work:

I am still not sure it works together but I do not think it looks bad so I have decided that I will use this as his card. What counts is if he likes it anyway!!

Should you want the motorbike SVG File go and look here: 

http://www.birdscards.com/for-the-biker-in-your-life/

21st Birthday Card

For some reason, since I decided to start my blog, I have been in undated with requests for 21st Birthday cards and decorations. Don't get me wrong, loving it all, but it does make me realise that age is creeping up on us and our children are no longer children but becoming beautiful and hopefully well adapted strong young adults!!

This young lady shares her birthday every year with her younger brother and this year she is turning 21, which is a huge birthday BUT her brother is turning 18 on the same day, which is also a big birthday!! PARTY TIME!!!!!!

Anyway, I wanted to make her a special Birthday card and because she is such a lady, I wanted to keep it really pretty and simple :

I do believe that I have captured her personality in this card and hope she likes it as much as I do!! Her brothers card I will be doing in the next couple of days and will put photo's up once completed. See ya!!

Justin Bieber Fever

Being a 40 year old, I do not understand the madness that surrounds the name "Justin Bieber" but I can appreciate that people are all made individuals with his or her own likes and dislikes.

A friend's daughter is turning 7 on Saturday and she has recently become a Justin Bieber fan!! To confuse me even further, this little girl is actually a tomboy and does not like anything girly or pretty!! This boggles my mind but with saying that I figured that her gift and card would have to be Justin Bieber themed. I never spend alot of money on my friends children only because I like to keep it all fair and prefer giving a handmade gift then a store bought one. I really struggled with this one but decided to cut out a silhouette of his face and his name and place this on an old bottle. I wanted to fill the bottle with sweets but could not find enough purple individually wrapped sweets to fill it without it costing me a fortune so I decided to wrap the inside of the bottle with purple cardstock and then filled it with sweets. The lid I covered with black cotton material and tied it down with a purple ribbon:

The card I decided to go plan and simple: