Special cards for Special People

 Hi y'all!
I haven't posted any cards for a while! So here are a few of the recent cards I've made, for some very special people!
This first one was for my niece Venice when she was born! For some reason I didn't take a pic of the card after I stamped her name under the "Welcome" stamp. I had made a girl card and a boy card, waiting to see what flavour baby Alicia would have! And when Venice was born I personalised this card for her {smiles}. I LOVE the new hexagon embossing folder from Stampin Up, I love how it creates such an interesting layer on the card! And I nearly wore out my Martha Steward Doily Edge punch while punching through the grey cardstock, I think I might need a backup one of those! But I don't want to pay the $25 I saw it for at the most recent craft show. Boy I wish we had Michaels the craft shop over here in Australia, everything is so cheap in the USA!
This second card was for my nephew Cooper for his 5th Birthday which was a Construction Party! I knew that Road-print Washi Tape would come in handy for BOy Cards! How cool does that truck look driving along it? And I just love the Stampin Up set of big trucks, they are so cool! I used another Stampin Up embossing folder in the background layer of this card- the Woodgrain one. Another one of my faves! You know I love anything woodland-ish, so this is perfect for me. And then I found the screw-top brads in my collection and thought they were awesome to add to a Construction card! Was I right or was I right {tongue in cheek!}

This third card I made for Dad's birthday :) Dad is, and has always been, an enthusiastic and awesome photographer, so I knew the Amy Tangerine camera stamp would make a great birthday card for him! The yellow star cut-out card was actually still sitting on my desk after I made another card with the actual star I punched out, and when I chucked it on top of the other layers of this card I was like "Bing!" {Light bulb going on above head} "That looks so cool!" LOL! Do you every have those moments in card making? Where something accidentally happens and it turns out to make the best card? Yeah me neither {looking sheepish!}.

And this last card was for my sister Yvette's 40th Birthday! I do love Hot Air Balloons and seeing as Yvette was going on a Hot Air Balloon ride for her birthday, I knew I had to use this set (by Stampin Up!) I stamped it with Versamark ink and embossed with some aqua coloured Zing embossing powder I picked up at Spotlight. It's the bomb! The colour is sooooo rich and it created a lovely thick layer which looked so good! They make the Zing powder in about a million colours too, so I'm gonna have to go back and get some more (then force myself to do more embossing cos it's something I don't do often enough, yet it looks so good!) I hand drew on the little baskets under the balloons cos I didn't trust myself to line the stamp up right, and I was so pleased with the embossing result I didn't want to ruin it! Can you tell they're hand drawn?
So I hope you guys all enjoyed your welcome/birthday cards!
And I hope you're having a great week too!
:) C

Le Tour de France!

Hi y'all!
Are you watching Le Tour de France? Yes?! Me too! I just love it! Not sure why, but I do {smiles}. It's the combo of the beautiful vistas, and the excitement of who might win the sprints and who can survive the mountains, and the sound of Phil Liggett's voice. He's awesome. And the comentators can just talk constantly for hours and I never get sick of their voices. That is just so weird! If only the football comentators could learn how to do that!
Anyways, in celebration of the Tour de France, here are some cards I've made recently using my Hero Arts bike stamp. I bought it from a loose box from the Art Stamps Australia stall at a show in Feb. I'm so glad I did, cos I love it!

I LOVE this guy card I made. I think it's the chevron washi tape that really sells it for me, I love it! And the crossword paper. I think the navy and orange combo is really cool too! That's a Stampin Up sentiment along the side.

Then I finished off lots of pieces of manly Basic Grey papers on this card. I always pass by these papers in my stash cos they haven't inspired me much, but when I saw them and thought of the bike stamp I knew I was onto a winner. And I used some printed clear sticky tape on it too, which is uber cool! And an SU sentiment too!

Yes, Yvette, you might recognise a similar card to this! (It's inspired by the card I made for Yvette's birthday!) I love this turquoise and orange combo! I guess I'm into blue and orange at the moment! I love that SU sentiment too, so sweet, and different from just Happy Birthday. You could use this card for lots of occasions.
Enjoy the Tour de France! Go Cadel!!
:) C

Teenager/Dude Cards

Hi y'all!
Happy Friday! {high five} the weekend is here!
Tomorrow I am going over to my sister Felicity's house to do some cupboard cleanout-ing! I always feel so liberated when I get rid of clothes I haven't worn in ages, armed with my bags of clothing I trudge off to the Op Shops and drop them off while I have a shop around! LOL! {giggles!} But it does feel oh-so-good to get rid of clutter. I hope Felicity feels it after tomorrow! And my sister Alicia is coming along too, she's the fashion guru and she is strict so she wont let you keep anything that is out of fashion, pilled or doesn't fit right. It's like having Trinny and Susannah visit!
My card box has been lacking some Teenager/Dude cards (not the old man style!) so recently I sat down at my desk and belted out a few.I love the Circle Circus set from Stampin Up, and I paired it with Party This Way sentiment from SU too. I think this card turned out quite nicely, especially for a simple card!
I love this paper with the old school bikes on it! I had this square floating around on my desk so stamped out a couple of extra circle circus rounds and stuck 'em all down with the Party This Way sign. Voila! Simple card, yet i really like it! The colours are a little different for my card box too. I always love that. Sometimes you just get stuck in a rut with colour and you need to break out {smashing through wall!}
And lastly, I used the Grunge Rock guitars with my Perfectly Penned "Happy Birthday" sentiment from Stampin Up for this cool card. Rock on! I love the Perfectly Penned set. I overlooked it so many times, and now I have it, I love it! I love when a set that you've overlooked for ages jumps right out and begs to be bought cos you think of awesome ideas with it! {smacking hand against cheek}.
Hope you've got some awesome plans for the weekend!
:) C

Man O' Man!

It's time for some Manly cards! I have been wanting to get the "Seeing Stars" stamp set from Stampin Up since I saw some funky samples using it on Splitcoast stampers. I knew the set would make cool guy cards (which are always hard to make!) and cos you can get a matching star punch to make it even quicker and easier to make the cards, I was hooked! This set is on the retiring list for the USA catalogue so I imagine it will retire from our catalogue this year too, which sux cos I'm just realising what an awesome set it is and how much fun it is to make cards with! The small stars I still cut out by hand but it's super easy to stamp and punch out the big stars, which makes a real "wow factor" for the cards (can you tell I've been watch "The Block"? They always use the phrase "Wow factor". If I had been watching "Escape to the Country" I'd say "It ticks all the boxes"- thanks for pointing that one our Mum! LOL! Isn't it funny when the hosts get stuck on a particular phrase and always use it!)
So anyway I pulled out my man papers and got to work. I have loved this orange skull paper from Kaisercraft, I think I may be up to the last scraps of it too {frowny}. But I've still got lots of cool manly papers in my stash to use up and I have to keep reminding myself to stop hoarding papers! The brown with green dot paper is "Turf Street" from the Scenic Route collection named after my home town, Grafton, and they even had a paper named after our street (Carr St)! My sister Yvette emailed them to make sure it really was named after our town (cos it's an American brand) and they confirmed it was! How cool is that!!
I was chatting with my sister Alicia, who is a fashion buyer and always is up on the trends and has cool ideas, about themes for man cards and she suggested high rise buildings/city scapes. I immediately remembered this piece of paper I had in my scrapbooking stash with the New York Skyline on it and I paired it up with the Seeing Stars set to create this cool card! I was really pleased with how it turned out, and it doesn't incorporate too many "fussy" details which aren't always a man thing. Yay for Alicia's idea! Thank you!! {hugs}
And then I spied this black star ribbon in my stash and went about incorporating it onto a card using Seeing Stars too. This card is a bit of a Star overload, but really, I like it :) {giggles}
Well, that's it for the man cards, I hope you are having a good week so far!
Oh, and to leave you with a Jaimeson pic, this is a cute Mega close-up I took on my iphone then played around with using the Instagram app. Such a cute little face! LOL! I took this pic at 4am at Mum and Dad's when Jaimeson was full of smiles and A-Goo's! He wanted to play, not sleep!
:) C

Circle Circus of FUN!!

I demo’d a Stampin Up Party on Saturday at Fliss’s friend Nat’s place. It was a busy party with 7 people, but it was fun! Nat has a gorgeous house at Chatswood, which was nice to hang out in for the arvo too :)
We made cards from one of my new FAVE SU sets…. Circle Circus {swoon!}. I only had my attention drawn to this set in the catalogue by Nat at a previous party and I really liked it cos I love graphic patterns and straight away began thinking of card ideas with it! I knew I had to get it to demo it at an SU party for her (and to have some fun with for myself too!) Unfortunately the Wedding seems to have sucked away all my original ideas so I had to case some ideas off Splitcoast! There are heaps of gorgeous ideas there for each Stampin Up set and other brands too, if you’ve never visited you are totally missing out!! So these cards are straight from there, just with a little tweaking here and there to make them my own {wink}. Once I started making samples I realised just how versatile this set is. I made some gorgeous guy cards, a baby card, girl card, Christmas card, and I want to MAKE MORE!! If only I had time {sigh} too much Wedding run around and overtime at work! Gotta spend some time at home tomorrow and try to get my creative juices flowing again!! LOL!
When I brought out the "Wonderful Husband" card all the ladies in the room had a laugh! LOL! Well, I hope to have a Wonderful Husband to give it too, I'm sure Will will live up to the expectation {wink!}

I'll post my other cool Circle Circus cards soon!

:) C

Riding the Creative Wave

Quickly Quickly!! This has to be the fastest post ever so that I can get back to my desk and do more creative stuff before the day zooms past me... qqquuuiiicckkk!!
Here are some quick and simple Dad Cards I made with my new Gizmos and Gears set from Lizzie Anne Designs. Did I mention that I won a $20 voucher in their birthday celebrations, so I had to order stuff (as if I needed an excuse! lol!) I thought this set would be great for Dad cards as flowers and hearts don't seem to be manly enough! I didn't want to add too much ribbon or bling so this is how they turned out.. hopefully not too boring! The co-ordinating paper, letters and tag are all from a Colorbox pack I got at Walmart in Hawaii for $5. Man I love shopping in America, especially for scrappin stuff!
And now some more skull cards (hehe, I know you hate them Mum, but I like them!!)
I love a pink and black combo for girls with this set, it's so chic and pretty even though the skull image is not so girly!! I love blinging up the skull with bows or these gorgeous little heart jewels I got in RJ's at Corrimal in Wollongong. Every time I visit Mum and Dad it is an absolute MUST that we visit that shop. It's the best "crap shop" (cheap shop) ever, and they have heaps of great craft stuff like Jewels, 3D stickers, the Kaiser range.. all this at a discount variety store? Amazing! And of course there's a little nestabilities die cut with the sentiment on it :) so sweet.

And not to be left out, here is one for the Fella's which I made this morning. (The others were mostly made last Friday and I just hadn't stuck them all together). It's nice to have started off my creative day already! For this boy card I used the "Ink By Steph" range by Fiskars- the paper and stamps both come from this range. I got the paper pad really cheap and it's awesome to have some papers that go exactly with the stamps :) I love this range!
Ok now it's back to my desk to mount some SU stamps and make samples for a class on Sunday!!
:)
C