Congratulations Baby Girl Card

A friend of mine was getting close to her due date and I realised I had a new baby card suitable for a boy but didn't have one for a girl. I didn't want to buy one, but I also didn't have a lot of time to make one.

I still had a box of pre-printed card blanks, if that's not a contradiction in terms - these are cards with different patterns but no pictures or wording that you can add a few embellishments to and personalise how you like.

I used one with a yellow and pink flower pattern as I thought this fit the new baby theme. Taking a pack of silver outline stickers, I stuck a bear and a rocking horse outline onto bright pink paper and cut around them, and stuck them onto the card. I used a 'congratulations' sentiment from the same sticker sheet on pale pink paper which I then mounted onto the bright pink paper and stuck on the top of the card.

Finally as I happened to have a small packet of brads to hand from another project and I spotted a couple of pink flowers in there, and decided they would add the perfect finishing touch. All ready now for my friend to have her baby!

I'm sharing this with Path of Positivity for this week's blog challenge which has the theme 'birth of new beginnings'.

Pint of beer cards - Father's Day and birthday

I bought a template to make cards shaped like a pint glass - you simply draw round it on a suitably-sized card blank, though you could also draw and cut out this shape freehand as it isn't too hard. Just make sure the edge of the handle is the fold of the card so the front and the back of the card stay attached!

I wanted to decorate it to still look like a pint of beer so on the card above, I used a patterned yellow paper for most of it and plain yellow to represent the froth on the top. I cut out a small square and used gold outline stickers to say "to my dear father".

 

I did something similar on this card but covered it with printed paper that had 'man-related' words on it - if you look closely you can see it says football, beer etc. I also had a pack of metal tags with different alphabet letters, that you can fix onto paper or card using small brads that came in the same pack. I bought these ages ago for something else I made but still had the right letters to spell out the recipient's name. Of course if his name was more than four letters long, it wouldn't have fit on the card!

Regal birthday card for my mum

As my mum's birthday coincided with the jubilee weekend, I made her a "Queen for a day" card. I went with a red, white and blue theme as well, and used a white card blank with a blue square of card matted onto a red square. The crown is actually the end piece of an old Christmas cracker which I had in my craft box! I jazzed it up with a few sticky gems and used individual letter brads to make the word 'queen'. I wrote the rest of the sentence freehand, but used gold outline stickers to say happy birthday and 'to my dear mother'. It's not my favourite card that I've ever made but I thought it was quite topical.

Brads

No, not Messrs Pitt and Walsh.... brads are little fasteners also known as split pins, that can be used to attach pieces of paper and card together. They are often used in card making as you can buy brads with decorative tops - either colours or patterns or even letters.

For the cards below, I used outline stickers of oriental dresses, on tall thin card blanks. I covered the card blanks with purple paper so used a purple pen to colour in a little of the outline stickers, as you can particularly see in the card on the left.

For the card in the middle, I covered the card blank with purple patterned paper, and cut out a piece of plain purple paper to overlay in the middle. I used four purple brads in the corners to fix on the paper - obviously I could have glued it on, but I like the way the brads stand out.

This card on the left also uses brads, with alphabet letters on. Rather than use them to fix on another piece of paper or card, I just used them as a decorative feature to spell out my friend's name.

These are a couple of other cards I made at the same time.