Pots of happiness

Another card for a gardening friend and another using a napkin. The picture was a bit too wide to fit onto ordinary 10x15 card blank, so I made it into cabinet-sized instead. I backed the panel onto white card and inked the edges with green. A piece of red checkered paper and stamped greeting and voilà, the quickie card is ready.

Birthday pilot

My brother is a student pilot, so this teddy with the balloons gave me immediate inspiration for his birthday card.

The picture is from a swap, so I just coloured it in with watercolour pencils. The movement lines were a bit too bold, but a waterbrushing helped a little. I mounted the picture on bright primary colours and added brads to keep the masculine but cheery feel. The strip behind the image is actually a length of coarse fibre ribbon, it has really nice colours and texture. The Dymo greeting wasn't too hard to come up with...

Mother's Day fairies

I like to use flower fairies in my cards sometimes, but often find them "too cute" to fit the card. For Mother's Day cards, however, they were perfect.

The first card went for Mom, who loves lilacs, so it was easy to pick the right fairy. I finished the card with a strip of lilac handmade paper and a peel-off greeting. The only problem was that I seem to be unable to leave out the fiddliest bits from the 3D pictures. Cutting and fixing the teeny tiny shoes on the fairy's equally teeny tiny feet was somewhat a challenge...


The second card was for Granny, so I went for a bit more old-fashioned fairy. This was one unlucky card. First, I managed to dye the fairy's face to orange with a felt tip pen (the ink spread too much). Then the violet card blank wasn't violet enough after I'd glued the vellum on top of it, so I had to back the fairy with a brighter oval. I tried to conceal the oval's edges with a peel-off border, which sort of worked, but not quite. Finally, the design wasn't balanced so I had to add the peel-off butterflies to the corners. I printed the greeting and used some leftover peel-off centres as brads. There's definitely way too much peel-offs for my liking. I think Granny was pleased with it, though.

3Daffodil

Somehow I managed to get photo aperture cards in colour in addition to the white ones I already had. Craft kits ftw. Well, a yellow one fitted nicely to this 3D-daffofil. I used green and yellow chalk to add interest to the background and added green buttons with knots of yellow embroidery floss.

No-nonsense bride

The bride was definitely not a frilly-cute-pastel person, so I went for a bold, simple and classy card. Often I don't feel like using peel-offs but here they served they purpose.

The red rose is from a gift wrap I actually have forgot I have (should probably use it more often). I backed it with cardstock because it was a bit flimsy anbd tried to curl up. To continue the theme, I covered a card blank with black and white rose vellum. I covered the glue with the central panel and peel-off corners and edged the central panel with peel-off border.

Copy-paste

Sometimes you come across a perfect stamp, but lack the means/money to get one for yourself. I knew I wanted to use this rompers stamp, but didn't have it plus didn't have time to try to find one, so I did a bit of copying. I don't usually draw on my cards because I really do suck at it, but at least this time I had a model to rely upon.

So, again a variation of my violet/Cuddly Friends card. I traced the rompers from the book onto acetate and cut it out. Then I used it as a template and traced the outlines on the checkered paper. I drew in the details with a black marker pen approx where they should be. It's not as nice as the real thing, but it will do. I added two green stars at the corners to balance the busier left half of the card and to complement the green on the decorative papers.

Three little elephants

As already mentioned, I have a tendecy to collect napkins but I am no good in using them in my projects. This card was one of the napkin projects I had had in my mind for quite a some time.

I glued the elephant-patterned napkin onto white card with spray glue and cut it into a panel. I attached a piece of red gold-patterned handmade paper onto a cabinet-sized card blank and attached the elephant panel on top of it. As the napkin was looking a bit plain, I glammed it up with gold glitter glue. Nice, quick and easy

THanKs

I love these text stamps by Heidi Swapp, they're so quirky that you don't need much else for a nice card. In fact, they scream for attention, so cluttering the design with too many details just doesn't seem to work.

I first stamped the greeting using ink pads from Colorbox Cat's Eye Queues Rainbow Sherbet and Baby's breath plus Fluid Chalk Wisteria. Then I stamped the greeting with Versafine Onyx Black on top of the earlier texts. I attached a pink flower brad to bring a bit of 3D element to the card and to enhance the pink text which was least visible. I inked the edges with wisteria ink, backed the image with patterned paper and attached onto a card blank, leaving rather wide white edges.

A rosy congrats

This is one card I still can't believe I actually have made. Yes, the design in itself is simple, but the colouring is a perfect ten! I'm really pleased how the shadings and all turned out.

I stamped the Hero Arts roses onto white card and colored them in with watercolour pencils. I cut the roses into panels and backed them first with green and then with pink paper. I glued a piece of pink lace/mesh onto card blank, attached the rose panels with double-sided tape and stamped the greeting underneath. Mere text wasn't enough so I added small dots around it with a marker pen.

Roses and spikes

I made this "half-serious" card for friends' anniversary. In my opinion, the Penny Black stamp and the text stamp balance the rigid formality of the rose-patterned paper and the design quite nicely.

The stamped image is again from a swap. I coloured it in with watercolour pencils and spread the colours a bit with waterbrush. I cut the deckled edge with decorative scissors and highlighted it with pink chalk. I decorated half the card blank with rose-patterned paper and fixed the stamped image onto the card. Finally, I stamped the text on the card with Distress Ink Fired Brick. I also glued a strip of the patterned paper on the envelope (the heart sticker didn't make it in the end).

Snail mail

This card was a real rush job and I'm not particularily happy with it, but the receiver liked it, so I guess it served its purpose. I just glued a Penny Black sticker onto white mulberry paper, frayed the edges, stuck it onto a card blank and surrounded it with punched houses and the greeting.

Home tweet home

I first came by this nesting box stamp in a swap and loved it so much that I just had to get it for myself too. It's perfect for new home cards and easy to come up with a greeting as well.

For a more masculine card, I used bright basic colours. I coloured the image in with watercolour pencils and spread the colours a bit with a waterbrush. I mounted the image on a panel of patterned paper and fixed it onto a card blank. I printed the greeting, backed it with light yellow handmade paper and attached two green brads before fixing it onto the card.

Another variation with more feminine style and colours. The image is again coloured in with watercolour pencils and backed with pink paper. I glued a large panel of stripy paper onto the card blank and fixed the image on top of it. I cut away the fastening loop from a flower button and used glue dots to fix it as a flower centre and to fix the flower to the card. Here's also a very rare occurrence of my own handwriting, highly stylised as my normal handwriting is terrible. I wrote the greeting on a strip of white paper and inked the edges with pink.

Cat express

Ok, so maybe it's not so common to congratulate your friend on a new car, but if you're desperate for excuses...

The free templates from Papercraft Inspirations had a perfect timing and arrived just when I needed them, including this nice car template as well. I made the windows a bit larger to better fit the cat's head and inked the edges. I stamped the cat image on a piece of plain white paper and glued it on the car shape so that the cat is peeking from the window. I used green and blue chalks to color the background, punched the text label with Dymo and decorated it with a flower brad. Looking at the photo at least, some sort of borders might have been nice, but for some reason I didn't make them.

I made another variation of this card when another friend got her driver's license, I just used brighter colours and a photo aperture card blank. I fixed the car with foam pads and stamped the congrats around the aperture (should've stamped them the same side up on each side). I punched flowers from the patterned paper with a small circle punch, glued them onto the corners and doodled a border.

A new home

I found this design in Julie Hickey's Quick and Clever Handmade Cards and just knew I wanted to make it. When my colleague bought a flat, I immediately embraced the opportunity to have a go with this card.

Although the original design was in shades of green, I changed it into blue to better match my friend's favourite colours. I punched three houses from blue paper and attached them onto a paint strip. I punched a house stencil and dabbed the houses onto a card blank with blue ink. I glued the paint strip onto the card blank, attached the blue strip of punched houses on top of it with eyelets and fixed a peel-off key tag with a foam pad.

Double trouble

Two cards in appr. 3 hours = no time to waste, a baby congrats and a congrats card needed. So I went for simple and tried and tested. Most of the time was spent going through the stash (now, what does that say about me...)

The baby card is another variation of the baby feet/Cuddly Friends card featured earlier. The general congrats card is almost too easy to mention: I glued a decorative paper with a macro daisy on a card blank and attached a chipboard tag with a pink flower brad.

What is love?

What do you put in a wedding card for two English students? A dictionary definition of love, of course.

I stamped the definition onto white paper (could have used something nicer though) and tried colouring the L with a red gel pen at first, but it didn't work so I left the image as it was. I backed the image with red mulberry paper, tufted the edges and fixed it onto grayscale rose paper. As I didn't have a gromlet setter, I used craft knife to make slots for the gromlet and bent the prongs with hammer. The red heart embellishment finished the card nicely.

Valentine hearts

Hearts and red, what else does a Valentine's card need? This card has hearts to alst the whole year.

I stamped the heart collage on watercolour paper with Distress Ink Fired Brick. I definitely should've inked and distressed the edges of the image, but it didn't occur to me then. Now it's a bit too "clean". I backed it with deep red card from BasicGrey's Blush collection, fixed a red flower brad and a piece of gingham ribbon to upper left corner and attached the whole to a card blank.

Peeling the petals

I saw this card in Cardmaking and papercraft and wanted to try it out. The design worked nicely, no problems there, but some of my own additions to the decoration could have been neater.

The card has two flowers on top of each other. The topmost flower is used upside down with the petals scored so they can be tied closed. The greeting is written inside. I inked the edges of the topmost flower with Colorbox Smokey Grey but forgot to do it to the other flower, I think it would have been better that way. I glued the flowers on white cardstock, but it looked a bit empty, so I added the instructions to the corners and drew a simple frame to define the card a bit more.

Here's the open card. The back of the flower paper was white, so I dabbed the paper with wisteria Fluid Chalk and stamped the petals with floral background stamp. As finishing touches, I added white dots with Sakura Soufflé, inked a panel for the greeting with Colorbox Queue Baby's Breath inks for a multihued effect and added some fake stitching (should have gone outside the panel, of course...).

Father Christmouse

Stamping is a quick way to make lots of cards (at least if you keep it simple), so it fits Christmas cards perfectly. I love the cute Penny Black stamps, so I just had to use this funny little mouse in my Christmas cards.

These were really quick cards to make. I stamped the image with black Versafine on white paper and coloured the image with coloured pencils (and chalk for the shadow underneath). I mounted the image onto a larger piece of blue snowflake vellum, fixed a white snowflake brad on the upper left corner and attached the panel onto a white card blank. To add a bit of festive glimmer, I decorated the brad with a gold peel-off snowflake.

You rock!

Well, perhaps the card isn't as much rock than folk or country... Anyhow, it does have a guitar, making it perfect for a music fan (or a player of Guitar Hero, although they might prefer a rougher look).

I cut and assembled the 3D picture, this time even folding the uppermost layer a bit (I usually don't bother). I left out the rectangular background layer because the picture worked far better on a CD without it. I had come across this amazing lacquer that you can add on paper (not sure if the paper has to be non-porous like in this case) and it gave lifelike finish to the guitar. I attached a piece of note-patterned white vellum on the card blank, glued the CD onto the card with PVA glue (it did buckle the card a bit so probably not the best way) and topped it with the 3D picture.

New horizons

A colleague got a new job, so we needed a farewell card. I wanted something relatively simple but still special so I decided to use tea bag folding again. I have to say that there definitely was improvement from the first tea bag folded card, probably because I used different fold and bigger squares.

I scanned and printed the patterned paper (didn't want to waste the original trying and wasn't sure if one paper would be enough) and cut it into 5 cm squares. I folded and assembled the rosette and attached it onto white paper. I cut a narrow border, punched slits to the corners and mounted the panel onto blue paper. I covered half of the card blank with the same patterned paper, attached the rosette panel in the middle of the card and glued a laser cutting in the middle of the rosette (another good way of hiding any wonkiness). As I had narrow strips of the patterned paper from cutting the squares, I glued one of them and another laser cutting on the envelope.

Lucky clover

My brother was having his entrance exams to pilot training, so I made him this cabinet-sized good luck card to give some extra push.

I punched six clover shapes from three shades of green silk paper and glued them on six punched squares. I glued the squares on the card blank, chalked a green frame around each square and attached an acrylic clover embellishment in the middle.

And did the card work? Yes, it did :)

Heading for the beach

Bon voyage cards are a rare treat. Usually you only hear people going abroad too late or the trip is too short or "ordinary" to merit a card (and chiefly because they are not part of the culture here). 2 weeks in Venezuela, however, felt like it would need a card to wish nice journey plus be a perfect excuse for crafting.

I tore a strip of shell-patterned vellum with ruler for the spine-side and free hand on the other and attached it with glue roller onto a white card blank. I chalked the other half of the card front with blue to give it some semblance of water (could have done better job, or it might just be the photo). I fixed the cardstock photo stickers onto white card and cut the border with deckle scissors. I fixed the stickers onto the card and attached shell and sea star embellishments on the corners.

Pit-a-pat

This is the baby design I like the most, or at least the one I use most often. And I absolutely adore this K&Co. Cuddly Friends paper!

I made the card blank from lilac Canson MiTeintes paper (not especially sturdy but a perfect colour) and brightened it up with the patterned paper. I stamped the baby feet with wisteria Fluid Chalk on lilac paper and matted it on purple paper. I fixed the panel onto the card with a foam pad and put a miniature clothes peg on the top.

T-h-a-n-k-s

When my regular stash dealer (I truly am an addict...) closed her shop, I felt I had to make a thank you card for her. For some reason, I have hoarded a nice collection of butterfly peel-offs but I rarely use them. I think I should do these 3D-butterflies more often.

I cut poppy paper to fit a normal card blank, then took a slightly longer piece of pink ribbon and secured the ribbon ends behind the paper. I mounted the paper onto the card blank, jamming the ribbon ends in place at the same time (I think there might be a piece of double sided tape under the ribbon as well). I punched small circles from pink and light green silk paper and glued the letter stickers on them. The glue on the stickers was terrible and the paper tried to peel its layers, not a good combo, so I had to use glue stick. I fixed the letters onto the ribbon with foam pads. I glued the butterfly peel-off onto pink vellum, cut it out, folded the wings a bit and fixed to the card.

Wedding couple

I coloured the stamped image (again from a swap) in using a mixture of techniques (coloured pencils, watercolour pencils and chalks), because I had trouble getting the shades right. I punched slits to the corners, wrapped a strand of metallic embroidery floss around the panel and mounted it first on cream patterned paper (the sheen on the paper reflects the flash, hence the bad photo) and then on a square card blank. I made the envelope to the shame theme from cream-and-gold rose-patterned gift wrap.

Three little piggies

I made a card for a friend whose a passionate Pink Floyd fan. At first I thought to use a snippet of lyrics, but when I came across the album Animals, the song titles were just perfect.


I coloured the stamped image (from a swap) in with Derwent watercolour pencils and softened them a little with waterbrush, but not too much as I wanted the colours to remain intense. I matted the image onto a piece of Turnowsky gift wrap (I just love those papers and cards!), inked the edges and mounted it on a card blank. For the greeting, I printed the banners with Word and chalked them.

Turning one

I made both the tag and the gift bag myself. I cut the number one first from spotted gift wrap and glued it onto grass green gardstock, cutting a narrow border. I punched a hole at the top of the tag, fixed an eyelet there and threaded a piece of lime green ribbon through it.

I made bag from gift wrap by wrapping it around a box and gluing it in place. Then I folded the short sides in at the bottom of the bag and fixed them with tape. Then I folded the longer sides over the shorter ones and each other and glued them all together. I folded and glued about 5 cm from of the brim inside to neaten it and to make sure it would not tear because of the handles. I punched holes for the handles and reinforced them with eyelets, then threaded orange string trough them. As the present was a bit heavy, I put a piece of chipboard at the bottom of the bag.

Something fishy

I can't remember how I came by these nice fish buttons, but they were perfect for a true fisherman's card.

Simple is the usual choice of design for male cards, and I followed the suit. I tied pieces of green embroidery floss through the button holes and glued the buttons on a green-speckled tag. I mounted the first tag onto a dark green bigger tag, fixed an eyelet through both of the tags and tied a piece of hessian yarn through it. I fixed the tags on the textured card blank and stamped the greeting below it with olive green Fluid Chalk. The recipient obviously liked the card as it ended up as a bookmark...

Bagful of birthday joy

I found this nice snakeskin patterned paper and just had to found a project to use it in. It even feels leathery! As my friend, whose collection of bags is extensive, had her birthday coming up, what better than a handbag-shaped card.

I sketched the handbag template from the top of my head and used it to cut the pieces from pink flocked paper and the black snakeskin paper. I paper pieced the handbag with glue and added a bit of chic with a tea bag folded rosette. I fixed the rosette to the card with a pink brad and twisted a piece of pink wire for a handle. I admit that the finished card could have looked better, but I have to say for myself that it was the first attempt and with no instructions . Taking this into consideration, I'm rather satisfied with the result, and not the least because my friend liked it.

Bootee-licious

Baby cards that are made in advance are bit problematic. I don't have pretensions with colours (blue for the boy, pink for the girl) but I can never be sure this is the case at the recieving end. Most of the time the baby's gender is still a mystery. As a result, I tend to use lots of neutral colours like yellow, purple, green and orange for the mystery babies.

For the card on the left, I draw the bootee templates myself and cut them from purple cardstock. I wrapped a length of white cord around each bootee and tied it into a bow. I used left-over pieces from peel-offs to give the impression of cutwork embroidery. I cut a square panel from yellow paper, punched the corners and decorated the edges with peel-off borders. I fixed the bootees on the panel with foam pads and attached it on a purple card blank. Last, I added a small round sticker to spell the greeting.

The card on the right is much simpler. I mounted an ready-made dungarees sticker on light yellow paper and mounted the panel first on violet spotted paper and then on darker violet paper, leaving narrow borders both times. When finished, I fixed the panel on a white card blank.

A thank you note

I don't often make thank you cards, somehow making them in batches after every birthday or christmas for every gift giver seems artificial. However, on special occasions I do make them. This one was a real quickie.

I glued a strip of flocked pink paper in the middle of the card blank, then took a ready-made mini envelope embellishment and fixed that on the strip. The mini note card in the envelope had once been pink and said "For you", but it had faded badly and was now almost white without a trace of the text, only faintest whiff of pink on the edges and so perfect for my purposes: I spelled my thanks on the mini card and slipped it back in the envelope.

Going eigh-tea

This is the first card where I used tea bag folding. I have to admit that it took a couple of trials – and errors – to grasp the idea of this technique and to achieve clean folds and rosettes but I had fun learning.

I punched squares from muted violet-patterned paper and made them into a rosette with double-sided tape. I fixed the rosette on white paper and backed the whole piece with blue paper before attaching it on the bottom left corner of the card blank. I backed the flourish on the card blank with the same blue paper and trimmed the edge with a strip of peel-off. I added the recipient's age on the card front with peel-offs.

Sunflowers

I needed to make two birthday cards for the same date, so I made the rare decision to make two similar cards, although I normally get bored on a design after one card.

This sunflower collage stamp is the first stamp I ever bought and one I had huge problems with at the beginning. I didn't get a good picture out of it, the result was always either smudged or there were parts missing. I first tried to use a paint roller to spread the ink as I thought I didn't get the ink on the stamp evenly enough. It didn't help. Then I tried stamping while standing. I did help a bit, but not enough. Finally I realised that the problem was the table. I needed a softer surface to stamp on, and putting a foam mouse pad under the paper did the trick.


I stamped the sunflower collage on yellow paper and cut it out. I cut 6" one-sided card blank from white card stock. I took a piece of wide sunflower-patterned ribbon and removed the metal wires, then I stuck the ribbon in the middle of the card blank (I tried first aligning it a bit to left but it didn't seem to work) and fixed the stamped image on top of the ribbon. As a final touch, I added a small peel-off greeting to the bottom right corner.

As the back of the card was looking quite empty, I stamped a single sunflower on the upper right corner (so that I could wrap the text around it and make it look like there was more than mere "Happy birthday"...) and coloured it in with coloured pencils. As the ready-made 6" envelopes are hard to come by, I made my own from muted yellow paper and stamped a sunflower on the lower left corner.

Nomen est omen

And just like that I decided to change the name and address of my blog. Sorry to cause any inconvenience...

Intermission

I'm starting to get bored on posting all these ancient cards here. I'd so much want to move to the present than wallow in the past but, on the other hand, I want to archive all those cards I've been making. Somehow I feel that I can't move on until I've gone through with the past. Oh bother, I guess there's nothing more to it than just keep on posting those cards... It feels funny to post about zillion times a day (well, not that many, to be honest...), but the quicker I post these ancient cards, the quicker I get to other things.

When I first started blogging... OK, when I first really started blogging I wasn't going to post anything but the finished projects. But now I think there might also be some general what's-going-on posts coming up. Not a diary or anything like that, I've never been comfortable or able to keep a diary but something according to that line. We'll see.

I sometimes feel funny writing these posts, like talking to myself. Although I do constatly talk to myself (to the point of seeming quite mad), I find it odd to do so in writing. I wonder if someone actually reads this. It would be nice to have readers, but then again I don't want to be "too social". It's hard to balance with the wish to be part of a community and the wish to remain an outsider...

Happy Birthday, Sys!

My little sister (somehow calling a 12-year-old as a baby sister seems really odd, it's not like she's anywhere near a baby! Well, she's not that small either...) had a phase when she loved wolves. So when I bought her a book on them as a present, I naturally wanted to make the card to fit the theme.


I cut the card blank from a handmade cardstock with black wood chips (or something similar). In my opinion it looks just like snow scattered with spruce needles. I cut the wolf photo from the back cover of my previous year's calendar, it was just the right size for the card and nice and heavy and glossy, like a real photo. My first idea was to mat it centrally onto a square of blue paper, but when the photo just happened to twitch from its original accurate position, I liked the "scattered" look better. It's actually a lot harder to place things haphazardly than according to some regular design and achieve a natural look.

To balance the bottom half of the card, I took a round blue pre-die-cut (now that's definitely not a word!) tag, but it didn't look quite right. I inked the edges, but it wasn't enough so I mounted the tag onto a piece of silver gift wrap and cut out the excess, leaving a thin border. The tag alone couldn't balance the bigger squares on the upper half, so I took a piece of blue ribbon left over from gift-wrapping, cut slits with craft knife to the tag and threaded the ribbon through them. I mounted the tag with a foam pad, but I don't have the faintest idea what I did to the ribbon ends as the card is one-sided... I guess I glued a panel of plain paper on the back of the card (I guess you can't call it an insert as there's no inside...). The peel-off numbers were actually in italics but I didn't want them that way, so I twisted them a bit when mounting and got this funnily wonky 12.

Congrats for granny

No ideas and a card needed in a rush, in other words business as usual. Luckily I still had these card blanks, the flourish in the corner glams the card up without an elaborate design. Although I consider peel-off greeting and a 3D-picture to be a boring design option, I used it here because it was the easy way out. Luckily this flower fairy was a bit easier than some, with no fussing with fairy boots or other tricky tiny bits. To emphasise the flourish, I glued a piece of lilac silk paper underneath it and trimmed the edge with a peel-off border.

Time flies...

Oh dear, it seems that my addiction to words and puns is getting worse. Please excuse me, I just can't help myself. And I'm afraid that the worst puns are still to come... Aren't butterflies flies as well? (Although I'm not sure whether these critters are butterflies.)

A surprisingly simple birthday card and also one-sided, which is not usual for me. The blots on the violet (the colours are a bit on the blue side) patterned paper just begged to be stamped upon, so who was I to argue? To keep the card at least gender-neutral (if not masculine), I chose the doodled insect stamp, I'm not sure whether I used blue or lilac ink.

In thruth, the strip of striped paper would have looked better if placed a bit to the left, but I let the insects to decide. A blue and a white skeleton leaves and the recipient's age in peel-offs provided the finishing touches.

A wedding quickie

I needed a card for my friend's wedding and I needed it fast, so I didn't have time to mull over every decision for 15 minutes like I normally do.



I took a lightly ribbed cream card blank with precut apertures and glued a piece of deep red rose-patterned cardstock on the reverse. I stuck three golden heart stickers in the middle of the apertures, and as the card was still lacking something I attached snippets of a peel-off scroll border between the apertures. For a bit of added luxury, I matched the envelope with the card with a punched square of the same patterned cardstock and a heart sticker.

I made one mistake with this card: I "neatened" the edges of the patterned cardstock (at least it was solid red and not patterned) on the inside of the card blank with peel-off scroll border. It would have been better to cover it with an insert.

A tired knitter

We had a small knitting circle among friends (although we tended to concentrate even more on chatting), so when I was making a birthday card for one of them, this kitten stamp was perfect for it.


My first idea was to emboss the kitty with black but the stamp proved to be too detailed for it and the result was far from satisfactory. Then I tried clear embossing powder, with even poorer results. So I gave up on the whole idea of embossing and stamped the kitty with VersaMark on blue handmade paper. I decided to highlight the ball of yarn with red but left the kitty as it was. I took 15x15 cm square of corrugated card for card blank to give the card some texture. As I wanted the card to have a needlecraft feel to it, I selected papers with cloth-like patterns and cut pieces from them. I tried to arrange them like they had been haphazardly thrown on a table (looking the card now, I think the red piece should've been higher and a bit more angled, and I probably should've inked the papers' edges). I glued the stamped kitty on top of the papers and added the text strips with Dymo .

Cheery frogs

I'm not very good at using up the leftover scraps from my projects, although I'm very good in hoarding them (it seems my scrap boxes get bigger and bigger). Here's one card where I tried to make use of the little bits and pieces.

I took a bookmark-sized piece of white corrugated card as the base and glued a bit smaller panel of light green handmade paper on it. I punched two squares from yellow paper and fixed frog stickers on them. I stuck a piece of green gingham ribbon on the card and fixed the frogs on it with foam pads. The card needed still something, so I put small peel-off flowers on the ribbon to balance the design.