The kindness and genius of Cobs

Some of you may remember that I mentioned a while ago that my mother had broken her ankle. Cobs, from The Cobweborium Emporium made her a get well card. You might have already seen the card on Cobs’ blog, but if not, or if you are not familiar with Cobs, go see her as she is amazingly creative but also interesting and very funny! Now I wanted to share the card here too (and I did check with Cobs that it was ok), but unfortunately the photos I took at the time were rubbish, so I had to wait until I could take some better ones.

This card has everything you could wish for. It uses gorgeous papers, it is feminine and pretty, it has humour and wit but most of all it is beautifully made and made by someone with a beautiful heart.

Prepare to admire, and to snigger!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Isn’t it genius? We all had a good laugh, as well as drooling over the fabulous handiwork. So thanks Cobs, for your kindness and your creativity, and for being so bloomin’ lovely!

 

Florals Two Ways

I have a quick post today – two cards using florals and a lot of white space – but with quite different results.

The first was partly a result of playing around with die cut letters on busy patterned paper and partly inspired by a card I have seen somewhere…but I cannot recall. The designer had either stamped a whole lot of flowers and then die cut the letters, or die cut the letters then stamped on the lower portion only. It was a thing of beauty and if I could find it, I could tell you what they had done! I loved the look, but wanted a really quick version so took a shortcut. I selected a floral border from a digikit, resized it, and copied and pasted several times. This would give me lots of choice for positioning my dies. After that I just placed the letters to give plenty of variety in colour and flower. Once cut I popped them onto 3D foam and spent far too long painstakingly positioning them. Not quite as quick as it could have been but there you go. I make my own trouble.

The second card is black and pink. Again. But actually I have been very good and not abused this colour scheme for a while. What can I say? I fell off the wagon and indulged in one of my favourite combinations. The roses are from a Craftwork Cards USB I have had for a while, which includes printables of the totally gorgeous Heritage Rose range. Hurrah! So all to be done was print a page of roses, fussy cut and layer them up. A die cut sentiment from Tonic, a knot of narrow black ribbon and we are good to go.

So, one understated card and one that kind of smacks you in the face, but smells of roses so you have to forgive it…just mind the thorns…

Supplies: XCut Wedding Alphabet and Numbers dies; Tonic Sent With Love die; Craftwork Cards USB including Heritage Rose Collection; Louise Tiler Birthday Florals digikit for Serif CraftArtist; card and ribbon from Create and Craft

 

3D Thursday: calorie free cake!

Well maybe that is not true. Perhaps paper, glue, batteries and plastic do contain calories, but not the tasty, moreish kind. And my alternative title of ‘inedible cake’ sounds rather less enticing.

I like giving ‘alternative’ or unexpected birthday cards and that box is certainly ticked here. Pinterest is to blame again. I decided to make one of the cute little battery tea lights turned into a birthday cake. I had seen a few, with varying degrees of decoration. Mine are, of course, on the less decorated side. Partly from personal preference and partly because I don’t have much time for anything more.

There are no doubt plenty of tutorials out there, but I chose to ignore them and just go for my own version. Sometimes a quick ten minutes in Pinterest can morph into several lost hours! I took a favourite pad of papers (Craftwork Cards Heritage Rose) so I knew everything would go together, something always worth doing when time is short or a deadline looms. For the first tea light cake I simply covered the sides with spotty paper and die cut two scallop circles for the top and bottom. Then I punched a hole roughly in the centre of one and made some small snips outwards from the hole. This allows you to ease the circle over the light bulb, but obviously looks a bit messy so needs covering up again afterwards. Some punched flowers did the trick. I wanted the same scallop circle for the cake base, but you also have to be able to switch the bulb on, so I used a small oval die to cut a neat aperture. Perhaps those tutorials might have given me a better solution for this, but hey, it works! A simple box from the same paper range helps to present it nicely. If I had more time this box would have been a bit fancier for sure.

I also cooked up a second ‘cake’, even more quickly. This one was made with a Christmas purchase for the bargain price of £1 for 4 tea lights! They are already covered in a smoky quartz shade of glitter – yum! Basically I did the same thing but used a fancier and slightly larger scallop circle die for the base. Also because this light has little ‘feet’ I just stood it on the base scallop die cut. It would certainly be possible to fix it permanently to the ‘cake’, in the same way as the top layer really, but I think it is fine as it is.

So there we have it. Two cakes, no calories. I did think about naming them “shark infested” cakes actually. It’s the shape of the bulbs…..

 

Scrapbustin’ gone awry

Like so many paper crafters, I find it difficult to bin stuff. When I make a card, it is only the smallest bits of waste that get tossed – you know, the bits that look like martians/amoeba/misformed vegetables/tattoos. Even though scraps go into recycling to help save the universe (!) I still want to keep anything pretty above a few centimetres in size, just in case it comes in handy for something else. And if it is from a more expensive range, well the law of inverse proportion comes into play. The more it cost, the smaller the scrap I will keep. I am almost willing to bet the farm (ok, I don’t actually own a farm. South London is not big on agriculture) that I am not alone here.

So, I have resolved to make more of an effort to use up scraps and then part company with the remnants that really are just taking up valuable space and serving no useful purpose.

Tough love! Buy it, use it, recyc-l-it! Ok, so that catchphrase needs some work. On the creative spelling if nothing else.

Dive right in to the general scrap box then? No, actually. There are two ranges of paper/card with which I am uber-fussy (sorry, can’t find an umlaut for my uber): Graphic 45 and Craftwork Cards. For these guys, whenever possible I am super-organised and store them by range/pad in pockets or folders and then I can include any tiny leftovers and keep them nice and safe. Because I have been using Craftwork Cards recently, I know there are lots of slivers and slices waiting for me in the Heritage Rose pouch. Convenience wins.

I need to apologise because this layout is definitely based on a card sketch I saw on Pinterest, and I was going to attempt to link to it but I cannot find the pin. I 100% believe in giving credit to the originator, so I am very sorry not to be able to do this. If anyone know the pin/site do let me know and I will try to include it.

Anyway, here is the card I made from scraps. And one tiny sentiment.

Then, because I found it rather pleasing in design (sorry, I appear to have been briefly possessed by someone from the 19th century) I decided to use the same-ish layout again for another card. Using a stack from which I can find no scraps. Meaning many sheets of 12”x 12” paper have been rent asunder (19th century woman paying another visit). More scraps have been created. Nobody judge me, OK?! I’m just going to have to save the universe another day. In the meantime I need to make up another bag of bits…

Supplies: Craftwork Cards Heritage Rose papers; Tilda Winterbird paper pad; Xcut tiny heart die and a small hole punch

 

 

 

 

 

 

Missing Links, and why I have never climbed Everest

So yesterday I mentioned that I had never done bloggy links and was not sure how to do it. But yay! I tried and they worked. My missing links are missing no more.

Really what I should have done was learnt how to do it a few months ago when I first started, but I am a terrible procrastinator with things like this. I tend to think ‘I’ll find out how to do it when the need arises’, as opposed to equipping myself with all the necessary tools and skills at the outset.

That’s why I’ll never climb Mount Everest. I’d get to the first hilly bit (!!) and realise I didn’t know how to say ‘crampon’ in Nepalese. Or Tibetan. Time to resort to the international language of mime, so oft adopted by the English abroad. Then imagine miming ‘crampon’ without resorting to a “sounds like” depiction that would only lead to confusion or embarrassment for all parties, and no satisfactory outcome.

Best leave mountaineering to others, then. However, what I have done is made a card bright and larey enough to leave at base camp and use as a beacon should you get stranded part way up. Actually I think you might be able to see it from space. So, to all legitimate mountaineering expeditions departing for major peaks any time soon, contact me and I will happily make you a beacon card to guide you to safety. (Do I need some kind of waiver here?!)

Back to blogging tech things. What I also need to do is go find those little yellow faces that everyone uses. Is there one with its tongue stuck firmly in its cheek? It may be needed….

Supplies: background and green patterned papers, flowers and sentiment are from Craftwork cards; Frame die is Tonic Keepsake Indulgence; gold card from Create and Craft.

 

 

In the pink, again

Pink and black again. Like a moth to the flame…no wait, that’s a gory end…why are so many of our day to day sayings actually rather gruesome? Like ‘keep your eyes peeled’? Who on earth would do that?? And yes I know not to be quite so literal, but it evokes a mental image of a nasty encounter with a potato peeler that just won’t quit.

Like a bear to honey…much better. Except now I am likening myself to a big old furry lump of a beast with a sweet tooth. Far too close to the truth for comfort. And I have never even been camping….

Anyway, I love pink and black together and revisit it time and again. Here we have another card made with Craftwork Cards Heritage Rose loveliness, some vellum and Hunkydory Adorable Scorable card. I didn’t try the Adorable Scorable until about six months ago (trying to chip away at Mount Cardstock which had erupted in the spare room), but I bought some when it was reduced in price because the colours were just what I wanted, and now I find it difficult to use anything else. It makes a really good and strong card base and the range of shades is super.

I have been peeking at a few other blogs today and am reminded of the existence of my alcohol markers. I think the black and white paper here might look good with a bit of subtle colouring so I may give that a go. Add it to the project list….