Get well soon

I heard recently that a friend of ours, who was in fact our son's class teacher many years ago when he first graduated, and my son was in year 4, is in Intensive Care in hospital following a heart attack. He is not yet 50 and so it came as quite a shock to everyone.

My immediate thought was to make a card for him, I really hope that sending messages, to let people know that they are in your thoughts, aids recovery.

I chose the sketch from Sketch Saturday, the colour Peridot from Daring Cardmakers and the theme It's a Man's World from the Secret Crafter's Saturday Challenge. I think that there must be something subconscious within me which associates hospitals with green. It may be something to do with the wearing of scrubs.

This image always makes me think of my son who is just starting work as a Resident GP.

Get well soon Eric!

Love this Bear

I think that these Pollycraft bear images are such cuties, I find myself using them time and again. Here it is for the challenges from Just Cute Bears, where I used the sketch, together with the chosen colours from Stempeltraume, where the selection was green + 2 other colours, in this case pink and brown.

I used a few new things in this one... my new border embossing folder from the Christmas selection from Papermania and a new large script one from Cuttlebug.

I also used the method of making a straight punched border into a curved one, as in my tutorial here. This time I used a Stampin' Up border punch, but the method was exactly the same.

It was particularly useful for this card, as the sketch demanded a large circle and I had no edging large enough for it. With this method, no shape would be too large, you could just keep adding more lengths of border. Useful huh?

The DP is a freebie download from Fred She Said. There are various shades of several colours... really useful.

Aperture card & Border tutorial

For this card I decided to use a Martha Stewart straight sided border punch to make the pretty border around the aperture in my card.

To begin, I punched a length of paper with the border punch, and then cut off the entire strip about 1cm from the punched edge.

Next I snipped from the straight edge, between the inner loops separating each one.

Using the same paper/cardstock, I cut an oval with my Nesties, one size larger than the size needed for the aperture and added adhesive around the under edge.

Now carefully starting to stick the border underneath the oval, (from a position which could be covered with an embellishment should the two ends not meet exactly) overlap each piece so that the outer section remains flat.

Because I wanted to make this an aperture card, I then cut out the centre of the oval with my Nestie and cut the same sized aperture in the front of my card.

By chance the border fitted my oval exactly, but I decided on a little embellishment anyway!

For the image I used a Unity Stamp which I printed twice without re-inking in order to get the shadow effect.

It is for these challenges

Stamptacular Sunday Challenge - Aperture Creations

Daring Cardmakers - Seeing Silhouettes

Charisma Cardz - Watch the Birdie

I had an idea that there was a shadow challenge somewhere or other but I can't remember where! Senior moments!

I hope the little tutorial was helpful!

One old friend and 2 new Challenges

This card is for a challenge which I have entered many times and thus feels like an old friend, but it's also for two others which I discovered only this morning.

The 'old friend' is the Secret Crafter's Saturday Challenge, where the theme is Mother's Day, but I used the sketch from Sunday Sketch & Stamp, and if my understanding is correct, it's for the 'Pink' Challenge at Stempeltraume!

The latter two blogs were found on Valerie's new Blog entitled Trouvez Challenges or Find Challenges.

This is the same paper/card which I used and wasn't too keen on, on my baby card, a few posts back, but for an adult I think it's fab!

The background stamping is Penny Black and you may have noticed that I turned a piece of Stampin' Up straight border punching into a curved one once more.

The large butterfly is from a Tonic Studios punch and the small ones from X Cut. All are Glamour Dusted!

The sentiment is Inkadinkado!