Happy anniversary Mum and Dad

Today was my parents 48th wedding anniversary – and here is the card I made for them.

I decided to grab that gorgeous laser cut paper from the Kingston Crafts Pet Collection kit and also the blue from the same kit.

From this I made the background and die cut that blue frame. I was going to add some fussy cut hearts from the heart paper but instead decided to grab these spellbinders flower dies and use them instead cutting different colours of the leftover bits of solid cardstock from the kit.

I added some red ink lightly to the flowers to give some shading but otherwise kept them to the orange, red and yellow and two shades of green.

I grabbed two of the spellbinders press plate sentiments that I then glimmered with the gold and added those – and then the gold gems to bring more gold out.

I think those die cut flowers are so pretty and against the funky laser cut background they look amazing.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Use up a magazine kit #3 part two

I’m still counting this as #3 as it is a follow on from the one sheet wonder I shared a week ago – this is the remaining five cards I made.

Here is the template I made for it …

And so I made the final five cards – all on video of course so check out the YouTube video – I’ve started it as a playlist so you can check out all the videos I make using this kit.

As with the other four I used the gorgeous hummingbird as the focal image for each. I had used different techniques to colour them so each one looks a little different.

On this card I also pulled in the embossing folder and although the embossing on the embossing didn’t quite go to plan I really love how it looks peeping through the circle.

I used lots of different colours of cardstock and bits of foiled cardstock to make up the frames and mats and card bases. It was fun on this one to add inking and splattering and stamping – I think this is my favourite from these five – just lovely to have the grungy elements to go with the patterned paper.

Also love the bright pop of pink of the card base.

This one I went to town on with my corner rounder punch – it was fun to pull this out of the drawer and I love the look of those slim panels with the rounded corners.

This final card also made use of the strip of the patterned paper which I hadn’t included in the one sheet wonder template as I knew it would be torn from the paper pack – but it made a perfect element to frame the panel of squares.

So five cards for this post but nine in total for the one sheet wonder template…

Just gorgeous!

Whilst I enjoyed making these I must admit I get a little bored by the time I finish this many cards that use the same supplies – it will be fun to see what I do next with the magazine kit – I know already it won’t be a one sheet wonder! 🤣

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Scrapping Saturday – summer shenanigans

It’s Saturday so it’s time to share a scrapbook page I made – I made this in one of the hours I managed to be awake and upright this past week but then ended up back in bed for a few hours from exhaustion – apologies for those listening to my voiceover on the YouTube process video – I am sorry you had to listen to that – but if I didn’t do the voiceover close to the recording I know I wouldn’t remember to do it!

I started with the piece of paper from the Expressions in Ink dsp from Stampin Up that clearly I’ve had a while but finally it got its moment to shine. I love these papers so much but think it might be the first time in using them to scrapbook!

I teamed it with some other old papers from the stash to mat the photo and create a base for the embellishment cluster but mainly the paper for the background is the focus!

I then went through the February and March embellishment kits from Hey Little Magpie and added in some bits from those and then went through the Bramble Fox and Lollipop Box Club kits I have to add in other elements.

The title and the perspectives of the smiley faces were from Bramble Fox club kits.

The vintage cameras I fussy cut from one of the other old papers I had – I thought the colours went well with the swimming costume I was wearing on this very old pic of me – I’ve guessed that it is around 1988 and it is from one of our holidays on Menorca. I love that island so much.

I love adding in the little word and phrase elements to my pages so it was good to bring those into this page too.

A bright and summer page – perfect for the photo 📸

I added the journalling after I took these photos … I popped it just under the top cluster of embellishments next to the photo.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Festive Friday 2025 #15

Once again I am glad that my Festive Friday was a little ahead – I actually made these when I was feeling a little unwell with a cold – except that’s now turned into two weeks of barely being vertical with what we think is Covid! Yesterday I managed to stay awake for six hours before needing a sleep so improving but pretty fed up! Anyways here is the blog post all about those cards I made almost two weeks ago!

I know I’ve been doing my magazine kit challenge recently so I am not really surprised that I then decided to pull out the Christmas magazine kit that I got a few months ago and make some more cards from that for todays Festive Friday – I just went with some of the papers I had already cut into and then some of the cut apart toppers and decorative elements. I ended up with a few cards as a result. So that’s a couple of Fridays on the run I’ve shared multiple cards! Definitely well on track with my makes for this year!

I mixed in some lilac and grey card stock for both the bases and sometimes mats. I tried to pull in any scraps I had to not cut into new card where possible.

I sometimes added in some dimension too raising elements up on some foam tabs.

Bits of scrap ribbon also got pulled in where I had used a tag – after all my friend Helen says “can’t have a naked tag”!

So there you go – four cards – all pretty much cut and stick type of designs – but cute and fun to make. And only a few scraps left of these particular papers – although loads left of the actual paper kit so expect to see more of these cards at some point!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Baby card

When I was at a crop in February one of the lovely ladies I was sat with gave me the challenge to use up my scraps (at this point I had made two scrapbook pages and my Mum’s Mother’s Day card all from the leftovers from a couple of page kits) and see if I could get anything else made…

… and this was the result!

I did wait until I got home to get the pink card blank made up to add the topper to – but I managed to fussy cut the images and the word from scraps and then layer up the little leftover bits to make a cute baby card.

I love how sweet this is and I am pleased to say it also has now made its way to my friend Jayne, whose daughter has recently given birth to a gorgeous little girl, Romy.

Not bad for the little puddle of scraps leftover from some page kits! I think I did pack just a couple more bits away when I finished at the crop but definitely there were not enough pieces to make a project from – so they will just go into the generic scraps pile!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

DT: ATSM – #490 – die cuts and/or stencils

I decided to do my design team contribution for Addicted to Stamps and More using bits leftover from other projects – and this totally was leftovers!

The die cuts are leftover from the spellbinders stitching die set which I die cut lots of and then popped in a pouch to be used at some other point!

The paper for the background is leftover from a scrapping page kit I got from Hey Little Magpie back in autumn!

And the cardblank is made from leftover cardstock from other projects!

So once I had arranged the flowers onto the notecard and glued them in place. I then stamped and die cut the sentiment from Lawn Fawn.

I stacked the hugs sentiment up a few times to give it dimension.

So it turned out to be a simple card to make because the die cuts were already done! Love how cute these flowers are and now I’ve used up the ones that were in the pouch it’s time for another die cutting of the scraps session!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else on the blog has been up to!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

UK stampers forum decorated tag swap

I pulled together some scraps to make a fun background for this tag.

I then inked it up and added the die cut frame. As it is for the UK stampers forum swap I needed to stamp something so I stamped and embossed the floral image on the book print paper.

I watercoloured the floral image (My Favorite Thing) and die cut it out. I then added some of the 49th & Market leaves for more colour.

I then added some sequins from the Feb Hey Little Magpie embellishment kit.

I then chose the sentiment and embossed that too!

Added some lace for the tag!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Happy Mother’s Day!

Yes I know mothering Sunday was last weekend in the UK but we ended up postponing it a week thanks to a revolting cold that got me and bizarrely my daughter wasn’t well either. I didn’t feel up to venturing out and certainly didn’t want to risk passing it on to my parents (my Mum has had a lingering cold for a few weeks already) so we postponed and decided that we would do Mother’s Day a week later instead. As it turned out I still wasn’t well – I did feel well enough to get out of the house for a couple of hours – got straight back into pjs as soon as we got home and straight back to bed with pain relief as felt dreadful again! It’s been a pants 10 days of being ill! 😷

Anyways … I rescheduled posting this card to now so at least Mum could see it first!

I made this card using leftover papers at a crop in February and then set it aside and finished it off as my Mother’s Day card for my Mum!

I love the cute papers and how cheery they are.

I chose the bird embellishment from the 49th & Market kit of ephemera.

I also added the sequins and twine from the embellishment kit from Hey Little Magpie.

To finish off I added the die cut letters and the stamped sentiment to make it a perfect card for my Mum!

I am hoping by the time this post is live I have managed to survive a day of working and can safely say I am on the mend!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Use up a magazine #3

Today’s episode of my use up a magazine series has four finished cards … and the next episode should finish off the full batch I prepped for with another five! And that is because I did a one sheet wonder with one of the pieces of paper in the kit. Here is the plan I made – it doesn’t quite go across a full width of A4 because I know that the magazine page would be a rough edge at one side where I tore it out and that way it wouldn’t be a problem to make it narrower.

So as with all in this series I’ve videoed the process so check out my YouTube channel.

I decided to try and keep things easy for myself by using the same focal image for all the cards – the hummingbird. So I stamped all the birds and coloured them all as one thing and then cut them out – this made the assembling part of the cards easier. I did colour them in different ways though to make them a little different and enjoyed putting some different techniques to the test.

Card one I went in with some additional embossing on the background using the stamps from the set and the splatter embossing technique. I also distressed the edge of the panel as it was the fab Kingston Crafts cardstock with the white core. Always love distressing this cardstock.

Card two was super simple – two 6×6 cm squares mat onto the dark purple cardstock and raised up on foam tabs for dimension.

Using the sentiments from the printed kit is also helpful to keep it simple!

Card three I went back to the embossed background with the sentiments – although admittedly covered most of it up – I also went a little crazy with gold embossing powder and the gold foiled cardstock that is the mat for the panels. Shiny! ✨

The final one I did do fussy cutting to the image to get rid of the white border and also added in the flower. As this one I had coloured using prismacolours I also added in more pink and some purple so it worked with the papers better.

It was so much fun making these and I know the final five will also be easy to put together as the papers are cut, the focal image is coloured and cut – they just need to be assembled- although obviously I sometimes make that a little more challenging by adding to the background a little more! You’ll have to wait and see what I come up with!

I’m finding this series a good challenge at the moment to think creatively on how I might put something together and make the most of the kit rather than always grabbing for other supplies – you never know though, I may end up teaming this kit with other supplies as the series goes on!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

DT: Kingston Crafts – Rainbow kit – scrapping Saturday

To say I love this rainbow kit from Kingston Crafts is an understatement and of course the first thing I had to do with it was scrap the pictures of my rainbow hair! 🌈

I mean – this paper kit was made for these pictures!

I had so much fun using the kit and the whole page was made from the kit and a tiny amount of white cardstock to write the journalling on.

So many fab die cuts to use.

And those papers – just amazing!

The kit is so generous and I know I could make so many pages from it so looking forward to sharing so much more!

This page got quite a bit of air time – clearly my hair is a little bit of a talking point! Although as I’m currently blonde Nigel did seem disappointed to hear that so maybe it is time for colour to come back to my bonce?!

Happy crafting!

Catherine