Something Great

Something great is about to happen..... Spring!  Here in the UK it has been a really very very wet winter, with flooding that started Christmas Eve and continued for January and February. The ground is so wet, only a little rain and the flooded fields are up again.  So spring for many will be a happy relief.  And so far its made a good start with some lovely sunny days down here in the South East.

I have made this card for www.sscrapbooking.com Magazine for Karen Burniston and Elizabeth Craft Designs.

If you've not seen the amazing dies from Karen Burniston where have you been?  Karen has teamed up with Elizabeth Craft Designs and released a fabulous collection of dies and with just a few cuts you can make the most amazing cards.  I just can't get enough of them.

For me when I think spring I think bright happy colours, happy little birds, blossom on the trees and maybe the chance to sit outside for the first time.  My two cats also love the spring and can be seen sprawled out in the sunshine throughout the day.

So, enough waffler here is my Springtime card.  Firstly the name of the card was inspired by the wording on this card.  The front is very plain with no hint of what might be inside.  I do love to do that with my cards :)  Its like a hidden WOW!

Materials used for Outside :

Patterned Paper from stash

Corner Rounder - mine was Xcut but any brand will do

Penny Black Truly Great Cling stamp

Clear Embossing Powder

Versafine Onyx Black Ink

Heat Gun

Pink card

Scissors

3d  Foam Tape

Glue

Firstly I cut a piece of patterned paper to measure 12 x 6 1/4 and folded in half to make my outside card. I then used a paper rounder to round the corners off.

Next I stamped the Penny Black wording from the Set Truly Great with the black

versafine ink and used clear embossing power and heat gun to give the glossy effect.

Cut around the stamped wording with the scissors and take a small strip of pink card

and cut the ends of one end to make a fishtail shape.

Stick the pink fishtail onto the card with glue

Stick the wording onto the card using 3d Foam tape.

Set aside.

Here is the fun part!  The inside.

Materials used for Inside :

Karen Burniston/Elizabeth Craft Designs - Agatha Eges

Karen Burniston/Elizabeth Craft Designs  - Garden Bench

Karen Burniston/Elizabeth Craft Designs  - All Seasons Tree

Hero Arts - Designer Woodgrain Background S5208

Penny Black - Critter Time Clear stamp set

My Favorite Things - By the letter font set Upper

White Zig Chalk Pen

Versafine Onyx Black Ink

Clear Embossing Powder

Heat Gun

3d Foam Tape

Glue 

Scissors

Cut a piece of white cardstock to 5 3/4 x 12 and fold in half. Use the Agatha Edges on the two ends of the card. You can either do this folded and cutting once or by cutting each side individually.

Place the white card onto your cutting mat with the card open and position the garden bench onto the center line.  Run through the machine.  Push the garden bench out * refer to video below for visual help if needed

Karen has a fabulous video tutorial that shows you how to use her bench card and I have popped that below for you to look at should you need a visual help.  

The bench part starts at 7.21 but the whole video is well worth looking at :)

On this card I wanted the grass to be cut around the base of the bench so I cut a piece of green paper measuring 5 3/4 x 4 3/4 and I placed the bench die onto the paper (on the long side), this time making sure the centre nubs of the bench die was lined up with the top of the paper (of course making sure I had the bench the right way round and I was using the lower half)  Cut away any parts of the bench that are attached to the grass area.  Stick this in place, your piece should nestle around the bench perfectly.  

Whilst I had my green paper to hand I then used the grassy piece from the same Garden Bench

set and cut three pieces of grass. Set these to one side.

Stick the inside piece to the outside piece using your chosen glue or tape.

Cut two of the All Seasons Trees from Kraft Coloured cardstock and using a brown inkpad stamp the Hero Arts Woodgrain background onto the trees.  The trees set also comes with a leaves die and I cut that several times from green card.  The leaves on this die are mixed but all of us Karen Burniston Designers have agreed that life's to sort for leaf sorting :) LOL

The blossom was made with the flower die that is included with the set and then shaped with a character shaping tool and foam mat.  Set to one side.

Next I stamped the Penny Black cat in Hammock onto white card, again with versafine ink and embossed with clear embossing powder.  This was then cut out.  In order for the cat to hang in the right place I decided the trees needed to be a little bit taller and I simply trimmed a little extension trunk and stuck them on to the bottoms of the trees.

Stick the extended trees to either side of the bench using glue.  Trim the branches either side that overhang the card.  Place the leaves and blossoms onto the tree with glue.

Using some 3d foam tape or pads, stick the cat in the hammock so it looks like the cat is hangingbetween the trees.  Stick the little grassy bits either side of bench and in front of the trees.  I only used a half piece for the legs on the bench.

Now onto some little decorative touches.  I stamped two little birds and a pretend folded newspaper.  I cut a blanket for the ground and a little cushion for the bench.

I finished it off by cutting the word SPRING out of pink card and stuck that to the front of the card.  The last decoration was the white dots that I made using the white chalk pen.

I hope you have enjoyed looking at my card and reading how I made it as much as I did enjoy making it.  You can't fail to smile when looking at this happy card.

All the materials used can be purchased from Crafts U Love

Happy Stamping and Diecutting!!

Caz x

Weekend Demo

Thank you to those of you who popped along to see all the Demonstrations at Crafts U Love and came along to see my demo table. Had a lovely lot of people come along, seemed to be busy pretty much all day. "Big Hello" to the lady who came along and introduced herself as a Karen Burniston Fan,  I do hope you liked my cards and you were inspired to go home and play with your dies :)

I managed to take a couple of the photos at the end of the day.  My table was an explosion of colour :)  Just right for the gorgeous weather we had.

I think currently all the Karen Burniston/Elizabeth Craft Designs are in stock and ready to ship right now from Crafts U Love

I was also on hand to demo the We R Memory Keepers Flower Punch board too and you can see the lovely blooms I made on the left of my table.

Bee card for my Husband

True to form the night before a birthday I am making a card.  Not always a good idea when you dont have a clue what you want to make.  So here is my husbands card.  I got a new honeycomb stencil and wanted to use that.  So the rest just grew around that.

Lucky for me I have quite a collection of stamps and lots of bee stamps.  The main one is a

Penny Black stamp, the bees to the side is a Peddlers Pack stamp that I brought many many moons ago.  The Happy Birthday is Woodware and I use this one a lot.

For the inside I used the heart from the Penny Black to fill the spaces and another Peddlers Pack Bee peeking through.

Of course the main card is cut using Karen Burniston Katie Pivot. One of my favs

So that's me for today, buzzing by for a quick post.

A little Thank You for Karen

I had to send a page for a collaborative project to Karen Burniston and along with their pages my fellow designers had been sending Karen some amazing cards to say "Thank You" for choosing us to be on her amazing team.  Wracking my brains for a good idea I suddenly looked the butterfly pivot in a new light and thus my butterfly bunting was created.

I cut the butterfly pivot onto white card and then a few snips later I had a joined pair of

butterflies. I cut myself 5 pairs and the I cut some lovely bright papers and ran them through

various embossing folders.

I then cut the butterfly detail layer from vellum and you cant see it on this photo but I sprayed it with shimmer spray so it had a subtle shimmer. 

I thought that this would look lovely on Karen's demo table and I have made myself one for my

demo table at Crafts U Love.

I added the body which was cut from silver glitter card.  Punched holes either end of the butterflies and tied together with some dotty ribbon.

I cant wait to see what this looks like in place on my table.

Karen Burniston's March Designer Challenge - Spring!

Happy Monday!  And today and tomorrow are the days that Karen Burniston's designers (including moi) post their March challenge cards and this months brief was Spring!  Whoop Whoop and with a day like yesterday its feeling like Spring is just around the corner.

So my card is full of all things that make me happy.  Happy colours, cute little birds "cheep cheep", flowers, spotty papers and Flutterbys.

For the Karen Burniston die I chose the "lots of pops" die.

This die is fantastic for making dimensional cards with lots of elements being able to be

displayed on the various levels of the "pops".  On the back one I have stuck one of the eggs

and chicks, further forward some more and then right on the front the nest.

The eggs actually came from the Karen Burniston Oval Accordion die set - this little stitched oval was the perfect size for this card.  I used one whole and one I snipped in half like

a broken egg shell, of course then I could not resist to pop one on the chicks head :)

Here is a list of what I used :

Lots of Pops

Accordion Oval - for egg and nest

Birdie

Flower Set 1

Big Triple Leaf

Butterfly Accessories Dies

the papers that I used are mostly the reverse side from the 

Graphic 45 Botanical 12 x 12 papers

Here is a closer picture here you can see better the depth that this fun "lots of pops" die creates.

I cut the butterfly from a piece of Shimmer Sheets that ECD had popped in our delivery at work as a sample.  Its a fun material to use. Shimmer Sheetz is iridescent and metallic Mylar and it's endlessly versatile. You can use it for clothing, quilts, accessories and mixed media because it's garment quality (colorfast and washable). It's compatible with all companies' embossing folders and standard depth dies, peel-off stickers, plus electronic cutting machines, most punches, and any paints, markers and inks that work on non-porous surfaces (including Tim Holtz's Alcohol Inks, Sakura Glaze pens, and such). It's acid-free, lots of fun for scrapbooks, cards, party decorations, wreaths and flower arrangements, and more.

I hope you like my card today and please take time to have a look at my fellow designers blogs.  See left for the links.  Come Wednesday Karen will be linking all these cards and project on the Elizabeth Craft Designs blog so please to check that out HERE

Happy Birthday Katie

It was Katie's birthday yesterday, 21 again... Well not far off she is only 22 bless her.  Katie works with me at Crafts U Love.  Katie is dreading getting older as she sees us moaning about aches and pains and the perils of sneezing!! LOL  of course we wind her up something terrible.

I had a little fun with this card.  I used a bunch of older stamps and the Karen Burniston Lucy Label pop up.

The fox stamp is Hero Arts, an older design, harder to find I am afraid.

The Rabbit and Flowers again are older Hero Arts stamps.

The Owl is a Hobby Art set, new to me but not sure how old it was

as it was a second hand purchase.

Here is a little close up of those cute animals.

If you are liking my Karen Burniston Creations please come along to the Crafts U Love

Spring Demo Event where I will be demoing these wonderful dies!