Retro Look Christmas Card

Happy Christmas!

Despite starting my christmas cards way back in April on this blog, :-O  I have still ended up finishing off my cards today - when the last day for posting is tomorow!  Resolution for next year - get more organised!

Loving the retro look of this card made by pressing just a few buttons on Picnik - it really is simple to use, love it. 

It's also simple to add a few fun effects too.  Same pic, different look:

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Frames like this stamp effect are fun too.

Hope all your christmas plans are working out.  I'll feel a bit more comfortable when my husband is safely back home from Germany.

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Late Xmas Card!

Where does the time go?!  I was happily browsing Money Saving Expert like you do(!) and the time disapeared before my very eyes!  I have had to do a rapid craft tonight which is why this Christmas Card is not complete - its a 'Work in Progress'.

I will show you the finished card as I'm still working on it right now (or rather when I've finished writing this!)

(Scanned image)

I've had a bad day today, I've had a phone call from the Cub Camp saying that I've got to pick up my older son up because he's been too naughty for them to let him stay!  :-O    So tomorrow I've got an 8 hour car journey with my father-in-law and younger son down to Southampton to pick him up!  Grrrrr!  Not happy!

Thanks for reading,

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

EDIT: Think I should have left it as it was! I added some more snowflakes and old fashioned glitter, but now it looks like a child has done it! :-(  Think I'm tired!:

Thank You Card

Tonight's craft is a Thank You card made with a decorative hole punch, patterned paper and a couple of embellishments:

To make this card I stuck patterned paper onto a card blank and used a scalloped circle to cut out the shape.  I then attached a text paragraph from a magazine onto the inside of the card.  Next I added the gold ribbon bow, the butterfly embellishment and the wording.

(Sorry for the quality of this photo)

I'm thinking I may use  a similar idea as one of my  End of Term Thank you Teacher's card...

I forgot to show you the bracelets I bought when we were camping:

Nice aren't they?  They were bought from the Campsite's Organic Food shop and were made in India.

(Smaller ones £3.50 each, Larger one £4.00! Bargains!)

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Last Bootcamp Day and Father's Day Card(s)

It's the end of the Creativity Bootcamp today and the theme was 'Smile'.  Here is mine:

I considered selecting a photo of one of my children smiling - especially when they were so young and cute, but I expect loads of people that are doing this Bootcamp have done that so I selected this one - of me!  

The reason I have chosen it is because its one of my favourite pictures of myself, I look so radiant and genuinely happy!  Believe it or not but I had just GIVEN BIRTH with my second child just before this picture was taken (by my husband).  

A nice end to a fun project.  I hope you have enjoyed coming along with me on my Bootcamp journey and I think I'll put a compilation mosaic on tomorow.   Not sure I'll get much crafting done though, I'm off to the Leamington Peace Festival.  Hope the weather improves.

Regarding my craft, I did two Father's Day Cards - well, one was a modification of the Picnik one I did yesterday:

I distressed it.  I just couldn't resist, it was too clean!

I also made another one for my Father-in-Law from my husband and I (if you are looking, dear husband, don't look at this yet, I've done a similar idea for yours!):

It's mini photos of 'Happy Father's Day Dad' made out of lego bricks, scrabble pieces, foam letters, letter jigsaw pieces (Sorry about the quality of this pic, can't take another one, its gone in the post 1st Class, hope it makes it in time!)

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Boot Camp Day 12 and Father's Day Card

When I started this Creativity Boot Camp I didn't think I would be keeping it up every day but I have to say it's been really useful to me to have a subject prompt for me to work on.  I will quite miss it when it finishes tomorrow.  I do feel that I 'cheated' a little bit, by sometimes using a photo taken previously, rather than on the day itself.  But I also feel that the photos I chose to use seemed so right to me for the theme.  Quite often I modified the picture too, adjusting them using my favourite photo editing programme, Picnik.

I actually took these tonight for today's prompt which was 'smooth':

This is an old Bakelite phone, which we have had in our possession for about 20 years, dating from the time when my husband and I were into green issues in a big way.

It needs a new cable (and a good old scrub!) but it still works.  The 'smooth' aspect was the casing which you can see is shiny & smooth and so is the dial, it has a 'smooth' rotating action, which is so satisfying to use.  My young son (aged 10) said he would prefer to use this type of phone than the modern sort!

I also took this one on the theme of 'smooth':

It is a photo of a glass sculpture that hangs in our kitchen window.

*

...And I've also made a last minute Father's Day Card for my Father-in-law using Picnik:

Hope those of you in the UK have been enjoying the lovely weather we are having at the moment,

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

The Lightsabre Gang

As you know, I've been away for a couple of days visiting my sister in Milton Keynes so I haven't been able to craft (I did however spend hours on her computer reading everybody elses blogs - I've been loving Shimelle's scrapbooking party, which was very inspirational!)

The weather has been really sunny, with lovely blue skies but it still has that nip in the air which keeps me indoors.  We did a couple of trips to shops like Toys'r'Us for me to get my little nephew something for his birthday and I had my first ever trip to Costco.  What a place!  It's a giant warehouse with goods packed up to the ceilings and GINORMOUS packets of everyday things.  I saw the biggest can of tuna I have ever seen in my life!  But, amongst all this they also had really expensive jewellery in there too, just across from the washing machine aisle they had a diamond necklace that would cost you, get this, £11,000!!  There were also Prada handbags costing a mere £1,000....  Its another world I tell you.  I did spot some scrapbooking goodies I would have liked to have got, including a nice vintage set for £13 for 300 sheets and a great storage caddy but I was coming home with the kids on the train and was already carrying 4 bags (blast!)

Just took a couple of pics of my kids and their cousin in my sister's big garden.  It has a children's mini fort in it!:

These brave knights didn't have swords,

they had...

..Light sabres!

(Pics modified using Picnik)

Finally today, I can show you a card I received yesterday in the post from kayc, who is from a card swopping group on the internet called craftrak.com.  It's fairly new so not many people are using it yet.  It was a nice card I received, but was very small (7.5 x 10.5cms). 

For details of how you swop, (think you have to register) pop along to the website http://www.craftrak.com/. (I haven't done any swopping  myself on it yet so am not necessarily recommending it).

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

x

Girl's 10th Birthday Card

Stop right there! - but only if you're one of my bestest mates and have a daughter named Megan whos 10th birthday is coming up soon, because I am showcasing the card I have made for her.  Well, OK, you can look if you want, but sssh, don't show Megan....  The rest of you feel free to carry on!....  :-)

Here is the card in its present state:

It's a pop-up card and it took me HOURS to make!  Behind this innocent fascade there are loads of complicated cuts and folds.  You can see more in this side view:

It wasn't my own invention, I got the idea from this fab italian blog called Hobby di Carta (that I always use Google to automatically translate for me) and even though the step by step instructions were pretty good,  it was still a very tricky card to make.  In fact, I can honestly say that this has been the most difficult card (technically) that I've ever made. But even though it was hard, it was fun too and getting myself through that challenge meant that I got to do the bit I like, personalising the card afterwards.

 

(Sorry about the quality of this pic, its a bit too reflective)

To decorate it I used loads of free papers from cardmaking magazines, the daisy designs were from 'Simply Cards & Papercraft'.  The stickers were from my stash and I made use of two recently purchased punches, the dimensional butterfly and the scalloped edge, both from x-cut/docrafts. 

(This photo of Megan isn't the picture I will be putting in the finished card, I'm going to get a more recent one, and one without bubble mixture on her hair and face!)

To finish today's post, I'm just letting you know that I'm going away.  No, not to this fantastic place, (Wow! Read the whole post! - and be a follower too, this lady is SO creative!) I'm just going to visit my sister in Milton Keynes for a couple of days.  So have a great weekend, and I'll see you back here soon....

qwiksave

x

Simple Stamp Card

Nice simple craft today - a card made by stamping and distressing, my favourite kind of card to make.

I started off in a nice genteel fashion, stamping the pink central decorative part and then added some pink flourishes around the corners and sides.  I then came in with the dark black Versamark ink.  I inked the corners, and then started on making a flourish 'forest'.  It reminds me of the story of 'Sleeping Beauty', the thorn forest growing up and taking over the pretty fairytale castle. 

I used a faded stamp pad to add the shading around the white area and I finished off by adding the butterfly.  I was wondering whether to colour the butterfly in some way, but then thought it would distract from the simple stamp appeal of the card.

My Birthday, Snow, Chatter...

Well! What a couple of days! I was hoping to come back home yesterday but yesterday evening the snow came down so thick in this part of the Midlands that the car wouldn't have made it! 

Fortunately it was lovely and sunny this morning so we made it back this afternoon when the snow had melted a bit.  This was the scene we woke up to though:

(My mother-in-law is of the old traditional sort though, she actually put washing out on that washing line later to dry!....)

The boys and my husband also made a pretty big snowman in that garden:

It was of course my birthday today, and I've had quite an enjoyable day but unfortunately not much crafting!  I must show you the card Ryan made me though:

Looks as though he made quite an effort!  I also love what he put on the back of the card!:

Quite the enterpreneur!

I have decided to save up my birthday money to watch (and maybe buy!) some of Tim Holtz's stuff next week on QVC, I lurrve his style!   

My mother-in-law also found an old sewing machine lying around so has let me have it!  It needs a new bobbin case before I can be let loose on it but hopefully soon...  (Wonder how you use one..?)

She also gave me loads of icing cake colourings and edible glitters from her cake making & decorating days (out of date for eating), wonder what I will do with that?... 

EDIT: Oops! Forgot to add the bit of crafting I did do which was this bit of doodling:

and these embellishments for cards or scrapbooks:

When I see the cost of embellishments in the shops I often think I should make my own.  This was me making a start. 

Robot Card

Remind me NEVER EVER to buy another envelope ever in my life again!  Think it could be something to do with the stationary obsession (!) but when I was in the attic I found a box with what looked like some envelopes in - I brought it down and found it was stuffed to the brim with what seems to be every size of envelope ever invented!  I am completely sorted to make LOADS of cards for every occasion this year, even the ones I don't normally do, like Easter. People that I hardly know will be getting homemade cards from me this year! lol. 

I made a robot card today out of the Tesco home shopping catalogue!  I used pictures of pots & pans for the head and body, a stereo deck for the eyes and nose, electric knives for the arms and shower attachments for the legs. I stamped the background with a gears stamp:

It's for a young boy relative who will be 8 at the end of the month.  I made this one a few months ago :

(On this one I used real buttons and a nut for the eyes, a staple for the mouth and paperclip springs for the arms).

Now, which envelope shall I use..?

Starstruck scrapbooking page

First of all, I think I should show you the card that Ryan made using the fingerprint idea we were doing yesterday:

Older children should do their own thank you cards really, however tempting it is for us crafty mums to take over! lol  (Don't mention the one I did a few days ago!)

Moving swiftly on....

Today I made a mini-scrapbook page for framing.  I picked up a cheap square frame in a charity shop that said it was for putting a 7" single record (remember them??) on display.  I tried putting a single in ('Two Little Boys' - and I was going to put pictures round the side of my 'two little boys' but the frame was too small!)  so I thought I'd  make a display scrapbooking page instead.  I've never done a display one before but that didn't stop me! 

As my boy Ryan was going to bed tonight he looked out the window and called to me to take a photo of the 'Orion' star constellation which was really clear in the sky tonight.  This is what gave me the idea to make this page about him, Ryan that is, being 10.  He loves science, astronomy and making homemade potions in test tubes so I had a good theme to work on. 

It was simply a matter of finding a nice photo of him, rummaging through the bits and bobs of my crafting stash and a good children's science book (Usborne's) and the page was made!:

If only all scrapbooking pages were this easy!...

PS.  Oh yeah, I also did this too in Picnik! :-)

Think I'll print it out and put sparkly gems on it, maybe make it into an avatar...?