Crafty catz DT - Anything Goes

Evening all, sorry I'm late in posting - still running round like a headless chicken and no time to stop and blog! It is Friday though and it's the last one of the month which means that it's Anything Goes! We are sponsored this week by Fitztown who are offering our lucky winner 3 digi's of winners choice.

 

My creation this week is not a card so forgive me for that but it is Christmassy creation

 

The design was influenced from the 'Tilda' trees in one of her craft book's. I tweaked it by making it from felt (not linen) and added the leaves and buttons. I also designed a heart as the topper, rather than a star so that you can use the tree as decoration at other times of the year.

 

So there you go. Hope you like it and don't forget to swing by and see some of the other stunning creations by the girls this week.

 

Until next time though, happy crafting!

 

Let's smell the roses and eat cake!

Finally back with round 2 of the wedding story - sorry it's taken longer than expected.

The wedding flowers were roses and thistles. The fabulous team of flower ladies at Church decorated the church itself, whilst out Aunt made the bouquets and table centre pieces for the venue. The name of the roses made me laugh, given the theme of the wedding being snowboarding, they were aptly named avalanche roses! The wedding flowers survived two weeks without any problem, the centre pieces and bouquets less well, but we still got a few more days of enjoyment from them.

 

 

At have to say at this point that the fabulous bridesmaids dresses were made by Cheryl's mum - they were so comfortable to wear and everyone commented on how flattering they were. My favourite part was the sash with big bow at the back, which had adjustable Velcro fastenings! which meant that as the waistline expanded due to over indulgence of food, so could the sash - brilliant!

 

And finally, the cake. Mum really wanted to make a pretty wedding cake - no such luck. Matt and Cheryl wanted a snowboard run instead. Ha! the bottom two layers were fruit cake. The top two layers were madeira cake in vanilla and lemon and then we made a chocolate sponge cake to be cut up in the kitchen as well (no wonder we're still eating cake!)

 

Matt made the figures for the top and I dutifully made about 50 trees to decorate the cake (which took forever!) and some appropriate signage too.

 

The cake was a great success, but I think Mum might cry if she ever has to make anything like it again. Lol!



 

So there we have it - all the crafted elements of their wedding. I promise I'll do a blog post with the wedding card I made them, but I realised the other day I never got a photo of it 100% complete - I made a couple of tweaks after the last photo I took of it, so I've got to pop over to theirs to re-photograph it.

 

Until then though, happy crafting!

Crafty Catz DT - Winter Theme

Morning all! another week has almost come and gone - and once again I wonder what happened to the time. I might actually get my schedule back on track at some point (next year?) anyway - Friday means one thing only here in blogland and that's a new challenge over at Crafty Catz. This week's challenge has been set by the lovely Dianne who would like to see Winter Themed cards please. We are sponsored this week by Sami Stamps

$12 giftcard

 

I printed this adorable set of owls onto teal paper and then paper pieced it using red and orange papers. I went over the surface with whisper pens to give some dimension and shading. The papers are all freebies from a magazine's Christmas collection and I finished it with co-ordinating pips.

 

So there we go. Hope you like the card and I can't wait to see your take on the theme. Until next time - happy crafting!

 

Wedding Stationary

I'm so sorry it's taken me forever to get round to writing this post, life doesn't seem to have gotten any quieter since the wedding came and went.

 

But here we go - finally.

 

So the story starts back about 18 months ago when my brother Mathew and his (then) fiancé Cheryl threw an engagement party. Cheryl asked me to help with the invites for them and we kept it all very simple but over an afternoon of stamping and gluing they asked me if I would make their wedding invites for them. Of course I said yes.

 

They knew they wanted pocket envelope cards, square and the colour scheme was going to be navy blue. But past that, they were utterly stumped! So first things first was try and come up with something which they could work from. Here's what I came up with:

 

With something to pick apart, it helped Mathew and Cheryl really focus on what they wanted. Matt wanted to design a logo linking their initials and the snowboarding theme they were planning to incorporate - that replaced the circle and butterflies. They loved the band but wanted solid ribbon not organza and no text on the front.

 

Round 2:

 

Success! with the basic principles of the design agreed it was time to locate the blanks to proceed in making them. I wanted to get a textured cardstock - I just think it looks classier and I lucked out, finding a company on ebay which sold packs of 100 blanks, with 3 inserts pre-cut and envelopes for £100+ P&P - SOOOO much cheaper then any other company I'd looked at.

 

With about 85 invites to make, I started making them early in the new year: I started with all the belly bands

 

The next task was to produce the RSVP's. I wanted to design a postcard style RSVP, but trying to get all the information onto something that small, with room for a stamp and address was tricky. After several trials I finally came up with a design that they loved.

 

After that, the remainder of the inserts were easy. Cheryl found a lovely poem on Pinterest for the gift list and the rest of the information was done in a very traditional format.

 

They sat ready to be written for about 6 weeks as they finalised the guest list and then Mum helped us to write them all as she has the most gorgeous handwriting.

 

With the invites done and no point in starting the place names until we knew for certain who was coming, the next task was to contemplate the confetti boxes. Now I was going to cut and make 50+ boxes but then a trip to the Range gave me a saving grace - they had 10 boxes for £1 which was cheaper than I could make them and frankly, would save me tearing my hair out!

 

So I shrunk the logo and cut that out again and mounted them on foam pads and 2 weeks before the wedding, Cheryl and I sat stuffing the boxes full of dried natural hydrangea heads and rose petals (begged and given from various friends and neighbours gardens).

 

On the same weekend, we also did up all the place names.

 

They had a sweet bar at the reception so the place names where sweet bags rolled up with the name tags and a rhyme and a matching blue tag tied up. It took me a while to work out how many poems and names I could get out of a standard A4 sheet but once I had we punched them all out using Woodware tag punch and a single hole punch - I can advise that punching over 300 tags and then putting the holes in will give you a) hand cramp and b) a guaranteed bruised hand.

(without name - I did some spare just in case)

 

The final thing we did that weekend was staple together all the orders of service - which Mathew had designed the covers for.

 

The last thing I had to make for them for the wedding stationary was their table names.  The tables were all named after snowboard runs in Banff, Canada (which is where Matt proposed and where they're going on honeymoon). I table plan was a master of design by Matt, who created a vinyl laminate to go onto an old snowboard!

 

Now, the only problem with being a bridesmaid is you don't get chance to take photographs really, so thanks go to my cousin who sent me these so I can show you

 

So, in theory - that was my requirements finished, but I had one last project up my sleeve. I wanted to create a card banner for them and I used chipboard bunting (from everycraftsapound) and painted it with blue paints I had at home. The real trouble came with the letters. I tried cutting card by hand, having a friend cut them out on a cricut and yet it never looked right. I tried foam letters (nooooooooooo) and finally I decided I needed wooden letters and started to look around. I was horrified at the cost of them so brought a bag of letters which are normally used for children to draw around to learn shapes and pulled out the ones I needed. I painted them white and then spritzed them with cosmic shimmer which I heat set with a hair dryer!

 

So there you go - all the stationary and settings I did for their wedding.

 

They were, thankfully thrilled with what I made them and I think it all went down really well with the guests too.

 

I'll be back in the week with the wedding cake (Mum's masterpiece), the wedding flowers and the card I made them. But until then, happy crafting! 



 



 

 



Crafty Catz DT - Christmas is Coming

Morning all,

So another Friday closer to Christmas, where is the year going? just as well this week's theme at Crafty Catz is Christmas is Coming. The lovely Nina set our theme and we have two sponsors this week - Rick St Dennis and Marianne Designs

 

3 Images of Winners Choice

 

Surprise from Marianne Designs

 

 

I tried to keep the card simple this week and came up with this

 

I put the digi image in Photoshop and turned it to Sepia tones and printed it off. I stamped a freebie snowflake stamp onto Kraft card using white ink and edged the square with some more white. I mounted this onto some dark red card and then added another strip of card onto the top. I added two strips of ribbon from Wilko's Christmas range and created a bow to add to one end. I mounted the image on foam pads and finished the whole design with crystal gems.

 

So there we go. Hope you like it. Don't forget to swing by the blog to see all the other gorgeous creations this week. Until next time though, happy crafting!





Crafty Catz DT - Ribbon and/or Lace

Morning all,

 

Well we're a week on from the wedding and it was a great success. I promise I will do a full blog post soon but in the meantime, here's a couple of pictures to tide you over.

 

Anyway, on to the new challenge over at the Crafty Catz. It's my theme this week which is Ribbon and/or Lace. We are sponsored this week by Bugaboo who are offering our lucky winners 7 digi images of their choice.

 

I coloured the image using promarkers (but forget to keep a list of which ones, sorry) and the rest of the paper are freebies from past magazines or printables I found on pinterest. I tried to use the image like I would a photo on a scrapbook layout but I'm not convinced.

 

The girls have created some stunning cards and projects though, so do swing by the blog and see what they've been up to and until next time, happy crafting