Going to the Zoo at Cardz 4 Guyz

This week it's my turn to choose the theme at Cardz 4 Guyz, and I have chosen Going to the Zoo. 

Now I don't know how you feel about zoos - personally I have very mixed feelings. I hate to see wild animals kept in enclosures and out of their natural environment. But on the other hand I don't think it's possible to really, REALLY appreciate them by looking at pictures or watching films, the only way to really understand how important they are is to see and hear - and yes, even smell - them in real life. So since we can't all afford to visit these wonderful creatures in their natural habitat, and as long as everything possible is done to ensure their welfare, and the zoos take part in important conservation work, I think they have a place.

Well, that's the controversial bit over! But it does explain my card a bit - I have used all the cute animal images from the Woodware Jungle Pals set, but I've set them against a grey background embossed with a Crafters companion stone wall folder, to represent the enclosures they are being kept in. The wall gives the card a rather more masculine look, too, don't you think?

I must say, though, these particular animals are looking very happy about it!

We'd love to see YOUR take on the theme!

I'm joining in with

Fantastic Tuesday - Cute 
Craft Your Passion - Anything Goes
A Bit More Time To Craft - Anything Goes

Dandelion clocks

Nowadays, I don't panic half as much as I used to when it comes round to a one layer week at Less Is More, nor, it seems, do lots of other crafters because it's only day two if this week's challenge and already the gallery is bulging with wonderful artwork.

The theme for the one layer card this week is to use a stem, so I've chosen to use this dandelion clock stamp from Blade Rubber. I masked off a rectangle of the card and stamped it three times using Versamark ink, then rubbed light green chalks over the images, then overstamped in black so that the green images formed shadows.

I am sharing this with

Less is More - One layer - use a stalk
Fantasy Stampers - one layer
Sweet Stampin - Clean and Simple

You asked for it.....

So the other day I posted my cute Kitty Love card, and certain readers suggested they would have liked to have seen the card I DIDN'T make, with my "drunken cat" stamps.

Which of course meant I had to go ahead and make it. Oddly enough I couldn't find a stamp with the right words on it, so I used Serif Craft Artist to computer generate the text and position it at rather drunken angles.

The cats are coloured in with a mixture of pencils and pastels, with the champagne glasses highlighted with a little gold glitter. The stamp set was a magazine freebie a few years ago and I've used odds and ends from my snippets box for the layering.

I'm popping back to Show Us Your Pussies for a second entry into the Kitty Love challenge and heading over to the Snippets Playground to share this with our guest head prefect for the week, Dick Orem. I don't know, what with Pussies and Dicks, anybody would think it was Valentine's Day or something!

Blue butterflies and lace

Another make from me today, this time a very quick and CAS card.

I took snippets of dark and light blue and used a Cuttlebug die (I think it was the one that came with my first machine) to cut two squares of each colour. With the scraps left over  I punched two tiny butterflies in each colour.

Then using a Kanban lace background stamp, I stamped lace in white on the dark blue squares and in blue on the light blue ones. Attached everything to a square card and finished with a ready made sentiment from Craftwork Cards.

I think the squares look as if they are lacy fabric cut with pinking shears!

I am sharing this with
Butterfly Challenge - S is for Stamping or Sapphire  and it had to be a birthday card to celebrate the challenge's 2nd birthday!
Sweet Stampin - CAS
Suzy Bee's Blooming Challenge = Anything Goes/Sentimental   

Going around in circles

Today's card is an easel card made using one of my oldest dies: I think it is a Marianne Creatables one and I love using it to make circular easel cards with.

To make the base card, I positioned it onto folded white card so that two scallops slightly overlapped the fold, taking care to position it so that when I folded one layer over, the scallops would match up, then cut my card and scored and folded right across the top layer.

Then I cut the circle again and this time also embossed it, using coral coloured card.

I printed the image off from the Rachelle Anne Millar Collection CD, and cut it out using the largest Spellbinders circle die from my Nestabilities set, cutting a circle in blue as well for the base.

The embellishments are a couple of acrylic heart charms and a selection of "singleton" buttons, and the sentiment is a die cut Craftwork Cards one.

I am sharing this with

Cuttlebugmania - Kids 
Allsorts Cahllenge blog - No squares - circular cards

Kitty Love

As you know, I'm not keen on making cute or pretty things for Valentine's Day. But I really wanted to show the ladies at Show Us Your Pussies that I'd not forgotten about them. The current challenge is Kitty Love and nothing among my stamps or CDs is remotely suitable (Well, I do have a stamp of two rather drunk looking cats leaning on each other - I can imagine the conversation... "I bl**dy love you Tiddles" "And I bl**dy love you, your my beshtesht ever friend.... er.. .wossyername") so it was back to the Little Meow kit that I won a few months ago. I'd been hoping to use the kit with my 6 year old granddaughter, but she took one look and said "Can I use your stamps instead, Grandma?" so I'm left wading through the box. Very sweet, but after I do a few I start to feel a bit nauseous.

Stop rambling woman and get on with it!

So here is my card, using decoupage, paper, gems and a sentiment from the kit along with a couple of  die cut hearts.

Chest of drawers card - tutorial

Actually, this isn't so much a chest of drawers as a copy of a piece of furniture my Mum has in her bedroom - she calls it a linen press but I don't know whether that's the official name. It has a cupboard on top and two drawers down below, which I have replicated here.

 

and for anybody visiting from Make My Monday and wondering where the arrow is, inside the door is a sentiment, complete with arrow!

 

I've added a piece of white card to the inside to write the greeting on.

This was actually very easy to make. I started with an A4 sheet of Kraft which I folded and cut to make two A6 sized tent cards and set one aside for another time. Then I cut the folded card at each side, 5 mm from the edge, from the fold down to 2 cm from the bottom edge, and then at a 45 degree angle out to the edge. Then choose a label die that fits most of the way across the bottom of the card, hold it on place with low-tack tape (or bits cut off a sticky note!) and die cut through both layers of the bottom to create the "legs". You could just do this by cutting straight lines but I like the effect a label die creates, and you can ring the changes by using different ones.

Now put the folded card through a woodgrain embossing folder, positioning the folder so that the grain runs vertically and the bottom 2 cm remains unembossed. Because kraft card can be quite thick and it is double thickness, I use a thinner plate in the sandwich than my usual embossing one. I've already killed one Grand Calibur, I can't afford to make a habit of it!

To make the drawers, cut two pieces of kraft  9 cm x 3 cm each, and emboss them with the grain running horizontally. For the cupboard, cut a piece 18 cm x 5 cm and score at 4.5 cm from each end, to form the doors, then emboss each end panel separately, again with the grain running horizontally.

Lightly ink the edges of the drawer and cupboard pieces and attach to the card. Cut a piece of white card 4.5 cm x 8.5 cm, stamp your chosen sentiment on it and stick it inside the cupboard. Also cut a piece of white card to fit inside the card to write on when sending it - the embossed surface would be too difficult to write on!

Add gems or pearls for knobs - I used brass effect ones from my stash.

If you are making the card for a specific occasion, you could fill the cupboard with stamped or decoupaged images suitable for the occasion, and arrange bits peeping out of the drawers too, but I've kept this as a generic birthday card.

Right, I'm going to share this with a few challenges:

Make My Monday - Arrows
Use Your Stuff - Use an embossing folder
House of Cards - Shaped cards 
Shopping Our Stash - bent out of shape