"Owl" love you forever

I made this for Darren my hubby instead of a card for our anniversary.  We got married 14 years ago today in St Lucia and this was after 11 years going out.  So a whopping 25 years together is celebrated today!

Darren loves chocolate and I brought too many eggs for the Easter Bunny so I thought I would fill this box up for him.

The box is the Taylored Expression owl and Sack it dies.

Happy Birthday Card

I just made this card tonight for one of Harvey's friends.  Once again I found myself reaching for the Katie Label Pivot die from Karen Burniston dies.  I also used this cute owl set from Paper Smooches.

The papers are from the Lawn Fern Collection.

I am entering this into the the everything goes challenge at Paper Smooches

The banner on the front was made using the Taylored Expressions die HERE

Super simple, super fun card to make.  I hope you liked it 

Cazx

Karen Burnistons April Challenge Post

Karen's post is up on the ECD blog.  Check it out

HERE

There is a fab video from Karen and lots of inspiration from her Designer Challenge Team

Karen Burniston's April Challenge

Hello Friends, it's the Karen Burniston Challenge time again and this months theme is Mamas and Babies - Use Pop it Ups to celebrate Mum for Mother's Day OR make a Baby card. You decide! 

Go to the Elizabeth Craft Designs Blog this Wednesday to see to collaborative post from Karen where she will show you what all us designers have done for this theme and I am sure Karen will have something WOW for us too.

And here is my card.  I decided on "Baby" for my card, since Mothers Day in the UK has already been and gone and I do love to create baby cards.

I used the Karen Burniston/Elizabeth Craft Designs Heart Pivot die, after all a HEART is perfect to show the love we have for these sweet little bundles of joy. 

 I used some of the heart decorator dies to create the glittered heart frames to decorate the main piece.  

I made my base card from a soft blue card stock and used one of the KB Embosing folders called TRENDY TILES 1 on the edges.,  I used a white inkpad to highlight the embossing further.

The Congratulations die is from Elizabeth Craft Designs

Those cute little Hedgehogs are from Penny Black.  I love these guys.  Margaret Sherry is

my favourite Penny Black designer.  I am a little sad to see that Penny Black don't appear to have any of her designs in the newest collection :(  I hope this is a one off.

I love the dimension these cards give using the Pivot dies.  And I love how easy they are, they really are so simple.  I can not wait to see what Karen has up her sleeve for any new designs!

So head on over on Wednesday to see the complete Designer Challenge Team and their cards. I am sure your socks will be knocked off! as mine are each month.

Crafty palace had its 15 minutes of fame

My crafty palace got its 15 minutes of fame last Saturday as I was approached by the Daily Mail for them to come and take a photo.

I'll see if I can find the link to the online article.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2597309/No-husbands-allowed-Think-sheds-refuge-men-These-women-built-backyard-havens.html

Was a fun experience. I even had hair and make up sent round! Lol and some tops sent round on a bike. Madness. But fun.  Lovely make up lady and lovely photographer. A day to remember for sure.

Like a bus...

No card for days and then two one after the other :)  Here is a card I made for one of my sons friends Connor who's birthday is today.  Armed with my trusty Karen Burniston Katie Label Pivot and the ultra cute dinosaurs from Paper Smooches.

Here is the inside and you can see the two dinosaurs playing footie!

And here is the outside.   I also used the number 8 from the Marianne

number set and the name was made using Lil' Inker Stitched Alphabet

The paper is Lawn Fawn all items apart from the Lil' Inker is

from Crafts U Love

Happy Birthday Kiera

It was my nieces birthday yesterday and here is the card I made for her.  Of course I had to throw in a Karen Burniston die and I used the Katie Pivot as the base for my card and inspired by all the "Card in a box" cards lately I made this one a "Box in a card".  Why make a flat card when you can a pop out card?!

#

I cut the Katie Pivot from the card and folded them in half, the centre points stuck forward to create

the base I needed for my "box".  I then filled it with flowers and leaves and went to town decorating the

rest of the card with lots of other dies.

Materials Used :

Karen Burniston Katie Label 

Cottage Cutz Mr Snuggles 

Marianne Numbers

Impression Obsession Rabbits and Long Grass

Cazx

A little video - flower punch board

I made a little video yesterday showing you how I made the double punched flower.

The volume wasn't working on my web cam so I had to add written instructions to the video

which will not work on some devises unfortunately.

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.