Wedding Anniversary card - using a "Quick Page"

It's my wedding anniversary today!

16 years Miles and I have been together - in marriage that is! We've actually been "together" for 18 and a half years!

So here is the card he received this morning.

The title was cut using my trusty Craft Robo, eventually! That was because I had forgotten how to set it up in the program, and for some reason (probably because of the UK Scrappers changes to their whole site) my favourite link to the helpful article in the Craft Robo forum doesn't work any more!

Isn't it always the way when you want to do something quickly! I made the card last night!!!

There is a bit of ribbon and a "gem" brad of course but here is the clever bit you might want to remember!

The background is actually a downloadable digital "Quick Page"!! That means (for those unfamiliar with the term) that the page is done for you and it is actually just a picture file a PNG or even a JPEG - just like the ones from your camera).

The designer, in this case Retrodiva, designs a whole page and leaves a "hole" for you to put your picture in!

Most of these quick pages come in 12x12" size but, of course you can resize! I resized to 5.5" square so that I could place the finished "page" onto an A5 sized card - I obviously cut the bottom off the base card to make it square!

But quick pages are GREAT for cards... I have used a few recently for cards and just added embellishments... effectively making them Hybrid cards!

And the beauty of it is that you can do the same using any program (such as a word processor even) that supports the use of pictures!

So you see it can be worth dabbling in digital, especially when some of these things are free! (I will point out that this one wasn't free but was a mere $5.99 (£2.70) for 5 quick pages! Just over 50p each!

Blue Birthday Card

This is my latest card creation. All blue for a sister that likes blue.

I used the masking technique for the feathered colouring around the centre and then stamped and embossed white powder using the swirls from the Basic Grey Two Scoops collection.

The 'Happy Birthday' was die cut using a cuttlebug kindly brought in by Karelyn at the last ScrapBuddies crop (March). A very easy little machine to use the Cuttlebug! The dies are quite expensive though I understand, and of course, it's all a bit bulky with the machine, and dies.

So thank you to Karelyn for lugging it in for us all to use!

I have been using my Craft Robo... on my latest layout which I spoke about on Saturday.. which I have actually finished and will show you all the finished item shortly.

Birthday Cards

I made a card for my 10 year niece last night, I used papers from Junkitz. Although the background is a photocopy of another of my daughter's "paintings".

The name is cut from the Junkitz papers, but then I realised I wanted to mount them up on foam pads, so I cut another set of letters out and adhered the paper to them to give them some strength, something I wouldn't have done before my Craft Robo arrived!

Inside is a bit more of the paper with 3 ribbons stapled to it. I always like to add something to the inside pages, it makes the card seem more special I feel.

The third picture here is the card Honey made for her cousin... bless her! Currently she has to write her name on everything including her age (4).

Sewing on Scrapbooking Layouts

This is my latest page. It was inspired by a layout by Marni Telford so this is my interpretation. The link to Marni takes you to the post including the photo of the Layout, but you have to scroll down to the third photo.

I did try to copy the photo here, but for some reason, 'gifs' don't want to copy!

Anyway I can't clearly see whether Marni has used stitching or just doodled, but I got the sewing machine out!! As for the title... "Badger" that was cut out using my Craft Robo, great machine!

The papers are mostly Basic Grey's Scarlet's letter 6x6 pad.

Oh and Badger... my old dog (although this picture was taken when he was a young man of around 1 year old!), sadly passed on Christmas Eve 2003 - 2 weeks after my daughter was born, he was 15. I named our last house after him, which is where I knew he would end up being buried... the house is called "Badgers Oak" and we planted an Oak tree sapling above him, don't know if it's still there mind! But there was a huge oak tree right beside the house anyway and more all around the fields surrounding the house. The new owners have kept the name and it is a little bit of my "little man" that lives on.

Badgers memorial stone (which we keep with us) just says...

Badger... My Shadow, My Friend.

Albums - the Making of 5x7 Album "In the Mirror" - Part 1

The first in the series of photos from the "In the Mirror" Album, which is an album of photographs taking during a 10 minutes shoot of myself and my daughter in the mirror (strangely LOL!).

This cover isn't actually finished!

"Well why have you posted it on here then?" I hear you ask!

Well, for a reason!

"And what pray is that?" you ask further!

Well, I want to show you that we all do stuff that we end up changing because it doesn't work. Now strictly speaking I knew the small size of these letters wouldn't be big enough, but I just had to try them. The reason I was so impatient was because the title to the album was the first ever thing I cut with my brand new Craft ROBO !! Woo hoo!

I haven't quite got the hang of the fact that despite typing in the height of my letters to be 3cm, that's not what was cut out!

So a TIP: when choosing a font size by mm dimensions rather than point size, be aware that the measurement often includes quite a bit of white space top and bottom of the letters themselves!

So anyway, I plan to cut this title again shortly, only much larger! Then I will also add some other embellishments such as a flower(s), and, of course, I shall post a picture of it as soon as it is done!

I think I will make Mondays, my "Album" day. Thereby each Monday the blog post will be about either an album I am working on and/or inspiration for albums from other sources.

New Layout - first for 2008

Ok so the last post was a little boring... picture of a handful of rocks!

Well it was about using the gloss actually, but I have now glossed something else and it's on a layout!

This is my first page of 2008 - it's an 8x8 page and done in an hour and that included getting my new Craft Robo (christmas present) to cut out 2 titles, the first being the wrong way round! tut! - well it was late!

I made it up as I went along, I think it looks a little like it too - but I was determined to make up a page after all that clearing up and clearing out!

Basic Grey papers, although they were actually scrap photocopies, I had taken copies for another layout, but the colour cartidge was on it's way out and the papers were a little on the yellow side... but matched this picture well, so I used them!

The gloss I was referring to, I added to the word Moody which I had cut using the Craft Robo ("Cream and Sugar" font). It gave the brown paper a little more "oomph", but I did have to trace an outline of white around the "y" as it got lost in the "grass" !LOL