my Crafty Corner

Cards and other handicrafts made by Jean Straw

Sunday 18 November 2012

Happy News

 Yes this this week we got the news we have been waiting eagerly for, the safe arrival of our first Great Garndchild, a beautiful little girl. This is the card that I made for her proud parents. I had nothing baby related in my stash except this backing paper from Papermania. It is actually from a set for making a little scrap book for a baby boy. As I didn't know if  was going to be a boy or girl at the time I chose this one because although it predominantly blue I thought the design was neutral enough for either. I cut it to fit the card with some scalloped scissors and  prepared two mounting mats one pink and one blue, so that the card was ready to assemble when needed. I then went to the craft show at the NEC  last weekend hoping to find a suitable stamp.This cute little baby snuggling up in a cloud  by Inkwell Stamps was all I could see.I stamped it onto white card and coloured it with pencils and used a Go Kreate scalloped oval die to cut it out. I shaded around the edge with Spun Sugar DI and added some white Flower Soft to make the
cloud look more fluffy. Next I glued the backing paper to the pink mount
and wrapped the pink gingham ribbon around it and added a bow. That was then fixed to the card and the stamped image fixed with foam tape. I stamped the words,( from an old clear stamp set I don't know the name of ) onto a scrap of patterned paper and again mounted it onto pink card and fixed to the card. Lastly I added two little heart shaped pearl buttons and a couple of charms. Finally here is a photo of the little lady at two and half days old, looking very fetching in her very pink girly dress.

I am entering this at Challenges 4 Everybody - Anything Goes
and at My Time To Craft - New Baby

Thank you for taking a look and for you kind comments, I really appreciate them.

Sunday 4 November 2012

Christmas Robin

The Stampalot Challenge blog has changed it's name to Stamping Sensations and the  first challenge under the new name is for a Traditional Christmas card. I always like cards with robins on and having bought this lovely stamp form Chocolate Baroque I decided to try it out. I wanted to keep it fairly simple to see if it was viable for batch making. I'm not too sure about that though as it took me quite a while to colour it. I love the images of fairly realistic looking birds but worry about being able to colour them properly. However having stamped the image with Memento black ink I set to work with my colour soft pencils, I like using pencils as you can gradually build up the colour and it is easier to rectify any mistakes than when using pens. I used a paper stump and some Sansodor to blend the colours together. After also colouring the trees and ivy I used white liquid pearl and crystal ultra fine glitter to show the effect of the snow.the Christmas greeting is also from  CB and was stamped with a red ink pad.
I am also going to enter this at St. Luke's Charity Card Challenge where for their last challenge they too would like a Traditional Christmas card.

Thank you for taking a look and for your comments, they are much appreciated.    Jean