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.

Gardener's delight

When I was trying to find excuses to make cards, my friend said that I could make her a birthday card. As her birthday was two months away, she forgot all about it. I didn't.

As the birthday girl was a keen gardener, I wanted the card to reflect this. I have a tendency to hoard napkins although I seldom make any use of them, so I grabbed the opportunity to do that. I glued a napkin with all sorts of gardening related pictures on white card with spray adhesive. Then I cut out the motives I wanted: a row of pots, wellies, watering cans, and a straw hat. I cut out another set of wellies and water cans for a bit of 3D decoupage.

I used another of my problematic photo aperture card blanks. To add a few flowers to my garden theme, I backed the aperture with a piece of flowered vellum. I glued the wellies on the vellum and perched the straw hat on top of them with a foam pad. The hat needed a feminine touch, so I took a bit of pink embroidery floss and tied it into a bow.

To break the strict lines of the photo aperture, I fixed the watering cans on its bottom right corner. The frame still seemed to lack something, so I cut out the blue butterfly and attached it on the upper left corner to balance the design. Finally, I used the row of pots to edge the envelope and to match it with the card.

Say it with flowers

I made this card for my mother's birthday. Having come up with this nice gift wrap and knowing my mother's fancy for gerberas, this was an easy card to make. I rather like its bold colours.


I stamped the daisy with VersaMark and embossed it with gold embossing powder. To frame and highlight the stamped image, I backed it with a square of red cardstock. Because the gift wrap was so bold, I decided to cool things off with a dose of white. Instead of sticking the gift wrap straight on the red card blank (hot, hot, hot, and "messy", too), I glued it first on white paper. I cut of the excess, leaving a thin white border, and stuck the panel on the base. I used foam pads to fix the stamped image to the card and to give it a bit of dimension.

Spring Greetings

When I got a bunch of card bases with photo apertures from a craft kit, I was puzzled what to do with them as I'm not at all comfortable using photos in cards. Luckily, I found them a perfect companion for small 3D-pictures, here a set of primroses. To soften the look and to add some colour, I backed the aperture with light yellow paper and stamped flowers across the card base with matching ink.

Anniversary cards

I made the next two cards for the same anniversary (80th). As red was the recipient's favourite colour, it's no wonder they both feature red roses.

The first one has grey cardbase (I spent a while debating with myself whether grey actually is an acceptable colour for an anniversary card), which gives a nice background for the bunch of red roses. As music was recipient's dearest hobby, I searched a suitable picture of notes and printed it out. To frame it a little, I glued it on red mulberry paper and frayed the edges. I then carefully cut out a rose image from a decoupage sheet and attached it on top with foam pads, to give the card a bit of dimension.

Although (and because of) the second card had the same theme of red roses, I wanted it to have a bit different look than the first one. I took five miniature silk roses and tied them together to form a bunch. I then clued a scrap of white tissue paper around the roses as the wrapping paper. I cut a rectangle with rounded corners out of golden angelhair paper (my first and so far last attempt to use Fiskars ShapeCutter...) and glued it first onto white and then onto red card. I glued the panel onto a handmade straw-textured cardbase. Glueing the rosebouquet on the card was the trickiest part, as it was a bit heavy, but eventually I managed to glue it where I wanted it, so that the diagonal line gives a dynamic feel to the card.

May I present...

I made this card for my friend's daughter's name giving party. It's surprisingly simple for my card but I rather like it that way. Since "labelling" boys and girls by colour was a sort of issue at the time in our chats, I consciously tried to avoid making a girly pink card.
I got some good snaps of the baby when she was only a few hours old from a friend, so I decided to start from those. As I just printed the photo on common printer paper, I'm not sure how long it will last without deterioraring. I then measured the place for the window on the card front and cut it out with carft knife – not the best solution, mind you. Luckily I had light yellow cord I used to hide the edges of the aperture. I hid the cord's rough edges under a small bow of the same cord.

I wanted to make the photo of the baby as the focal point, so the card front should stay quite minimal. I chose a picture of a teddy bear and building blocks as the colours suited the cord, and the silver highlights added a bit of flair to the card. The card front still looked a bit unfinished so I added thin borders with light yellow and light green gel pens, which seemed to do the trick. To continue with the non-girly colour theme inside the card, I mounted the photo print on light yellow handmade paper and added the violet rattler picture to adorn it.

10th anniversary card for our local

An anniversary card - especially for 10th anniversary - requires something special. This card is so far the only card I've stitched, probably because stitching takes time and I tend to be late with my cardmaking.

I stiched a cross-stitch rosebud from DMC's motif booklet on 18 count Aida. I mounted the rosebud panel on white card and then on burgundy card. I attached red angel hair paper on white cardbase and mounted the panel on top of it. Voilá!

Apart from stitching, the card was quick and simple to make. I tried to keep the card uncluttered to emphasise the stitching as the focal point.

This is where it started: first Christmas cards

I really first got interested in cardmaking around Christmas 2004 when I decided to make Cristmas cards for the first time. I had made few attemps to create cards earlier but, probably due to lack of vision, those attempts had remained somewhat pitiful.


The Christmas cards '04 didn't include much crafting, but then again, they were the first "proper" cards I ever made. And since there were about 20 cards to make, I didn't want to make anything too complicated. I folded black A6 card base to form a cut little cardbase. I chose black – although not a traditional Christmas colour – because it gave the card a nice graphic look, and lined the inside of the card with red paper, to give a bit of festive cheer to the card. The main (and only) embellishment in the card was the painted wooden reindeer figure I attached to the front.


For Christmas 2005 I was ready to try something bit more complicated. I was introduced to 3D decoupage at the craft fair and wanted have a go with it. I decided to make cards using robin themed 3D pictures. To set the red off better, I chose deep green card base. Thinking back, it might not have been the best idea to choose so detailed design, but the cards turned out quite nicely. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera back then, so I don't have a picture of them.


The Christmas cards for 2006 weren't very successful. I'm not quite sure how I ended up using mere peel-offs, but I'm not satisfied with the result. I coloured the two bigger Christmas baubles, but didn't quite achieve the glazed look I was hoping for. I think using transparent might have yielded better results. I added thin red border with felt-tip and added punched hollies to corners.