Delayed anniversary card

As some of you may already know, Shaz Silverwolf is our daughter's mother-in-law.  She and her husband went off to Paris last week for their anniversary celebration.  I am not jealous  ... not one bit ....just rather a lot!  I spent so much time there when I was a lot younger, and have lots of good memories and so many photos.  The thought of Paris brings back smells - fresh bread,among many -and memories of friends I have not seen since I left school.  I won't tell you how long ago that was.

Anyway, back to the card.  I had already almost finished a card for Shaz and Doug before I heard where they were going.  Then I knew I had to change tack, and went hunting through all my old slides to find what I thought would go together.  Most of them date back to a trip one Easter.  A group of us from our school had joined a much larger party of people from schools all over the Midlands to the Lycee Lakanal just outside Paris.  We had lessons in the morning and then were supposed to go on organised trips in the afternoons.  We must have been most annoying to the organisers as my friends and I used to "get lost" somewhere in the Metro and go off and do our own thing.  We always turned up at the right time back at the Lycee in time for the evening meal, so in the end, they gave up trying to hang on to us.

Obviously, one of our visits was to the Tour Eiffel.  This photo is not doctored.  The light was so incredible and dramatic.  Needless to say, we had a tremendous thunder storm just after it was taken, by which time we were in the lift going to the top of the tower.  In those days, you could go higher than you are allowed now so the view was phenomenal.  

This second picture was taken looking towards the Place de la Concorde, and is showing signs of age, turning slightly mauve-ish., but I quite like the effect.  

These are the two photos I chose to work with, mounting them digitally across each other, then mounting the whole thing onto black card, and filling the rest of the border in with black Promarker and ruler.  The  background paper was created using the Splodge mat.  I used three toning colours, to reflect the colours of the photos, and blended then as I wanted on the mat, then used the brayer to transfer the colour in three blended stripes to a sheet of Clarity coated paper.  I cut a length of cling film, misted it with water and scrunched it down on the top of the coated paper, and scrunched it a bit more, left it to dry, and then buffed it up with kitchen roll.  

Once the background was dry, I moved the topper round on top to decide where it looked best, cut the paper to fit an A4 piece of white pearlescent card and glued it down with Crafters Companion Stick and Stay.  I added the topper with Pinflair glue to allow just that little extra bit of maneuverability.  To finish off, I coloured a peel-off sentiment with the Dufex pens, and added two little groups of gem hearts.  

I would suggest that you might like to slip over to Shaz's to see some of her photos and hear what she has been up to on their trip and on her return via Dover.

Less is More - Yellow

This card is for this week's challenge for Less is More, which is to use the colour yellow.

I have to give credit for the sun idea to Emma Williams, who is one of Barbara Gray's talented team of designers.  I saw it done on one of her Create and Craft samples, and stored the thought away for future use.  It is just a case of dividing up a semicircle into segments and sponging different shades into each one.  I used one of the Big and Juicy ink pads, the Soothing Sunset one, and sponged direct on to the plain white card.

The glorious unicorn is from the Dufex range, and is one of a set of decoupage.  I just used the second layer as I wanted it to stay simple.  Sadly, a plain photo does not really do the unicorn justice as it catches the light beautifully.  I am very fussy about unicorns and they have to be good models of a horse before adding the horn.  This one is not too bad from that point of view. 

The sentiment is my one and only "Happy Birthday" stamp, and that again was stamped using the Soothing Sunset, covering two separate sections of colour to shade it slightly.

Rudolph Day

This is my first offering this month for the Rudolph Challenge.  It is one of my Dufex die cuts, that have been around for several years.  In fact, I bought two sets of each, so I still have one set left to drool over.  The card is one of my huge pile (getting less now) of the ready folded cards, which were a BOGOFF offer when I first started card making.  The Dufex is easy to shape to give it some dimension, and I always use Pinflair Glue which makes it even easier to shape your decoupage.

I will be back tomorrow with another of the cards I put together this week.  Mind you, with the proposed increases in postage rates, we may never send any Christmas cards again.  They wonder why we are not sending letters and other correspondence as much these days.  Have they never thought that it might be their brilliance at overcharging for a poor service, losing our mail and cutting down collections and deliveries?   Sorry about my soapbox moment, folks - not much Christmas spirit there.  See you tomorrow with another offering.

Sewing a card

Do you remember doing string art at school or making designs by drawing straight lines?  That is how I found this design, by doing a search along those lines on the net.   The central design of flowers and leaves was downloaded free, while the border came from a stencil I already had, and I cut the edge of the card to fit it.  I pricked it all out and used Guterman sparkly threads to sew the designs, only two colours, which I think made it more effective in its simplicity.  Dufex pens were used to colour the peel off to match the flowers as closely as possible.  The insert covered over the thread ends to tidy things up.  It was a bit fiddley, but well worth the effort.  You do need to be careful not to pull the threads too tightly otherwise it is too easy to pull through and damage the holes.