Twins baby card.

My DD requested this card for a friend who has just had twins, a boy and a girl!

The little pram images are stamped with Brilliance Versafine ink and coloured with Whispers Markers. All stamps and the patterned paper are by Heidi Grace. Cardstock is Bazzil. I used Fiskars Water Threading punch for the long scalloped edge and cut the circles and scalloped circles with my Nestability dies.

You might not be able to see unless you click the image for a larger view, but I also stamped a few words on the lemon cardstock with Versamark ink.........I thought it looked a bit plain! OK, I better 'fess up, I stuck the Bazzil on the wrong way......it was meant to be textured side out...........I really do need stronger glasses!

Other supplies: gemstone butterflies, Thickers foam '&', pink Kaiser rhinestone to dot the 'i'. I also used rubons on the inside of the card to spell out 'Twins!'.

Close-up to show the scalloped circles are popped up on foam dimensional dots.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

More pink challenges for Pernickety blog.

This card uses a sketch, the colour pink and the theme was for a child's 1st Christmas. As it will be my grand-daughter's 1st Christmas this year, this card will be for her!

A close-up of the same card showing the dimension of the teddy and verse piece.

Supplies used:
Kaisercraft printed paper.
Stamps - SU canvas background, Stamp-It Christmas bear, Art Warehouse verse and Christmas postmark.
A used Christmas postage stamp.......I knew I was saving those stamps for a reason, glad I finally got to re-cycle one!
Pink cardstock, white signo gel ink pen, paper distresser, Tim Holtz clear ruler and a pricking tool, ink, Whispers markers and Ranger stickles.

This challenge was for a Christening/Baptism gift tag using a sketch, colour pink, pink ribbon and dimensional layers.

The blessing stamp is by Heidi Grace.

Close-up to show the flower's dimension.

Short tutorial :- Evenly spaced brads.

I'm not claiming to be any expert in this department, but this is a quick easy system that works for me. If you have any comments or a better system to offer, I'd love to hear from you!


I had this old graph book, I think I may have had it for cross-stitch patterns previously, anyway it was perfect to use because of all the little squares marked.......too easy to find the centre, just count the same number of squares each way!


I cut a square from the graph paper, the sides measure 4cm (a bit over 1 and 1/2"), then glued it to a sturdy piece of cardstock. Using my pricking tool and an old mousemat to sit my graph paper square on, I put various holes in each corner, making sure I had centred them properly by counting the same number of squares across and down.


Before you decide which hole you are going to use, just push the brad through the holes to find which one looks better to you. Brads can vary in size, so it pays to do this before you make a hole on your project.


When you've decided which hole looks best, just place the graph square exactly in the corner of your card piece and sit it on top of an old mouse mat or piece of foam. Using your pricking tool make a hole through to your card piece and voila, that's it...............easy peasy!

Repeat for all four corners of your card and finish your project. All 4 corners of the card will have perfectly placed brads! Sorry, I can't show you the finished card as it's for my swap.......you'll just have to wait to see it!

Edited: I should have added that you should keep the little template you just made in a safe place - with your unused brads would be ideal, then next time you need to put some brads on a card it will take only seconds to do it!

You can also use this template idea to place a line of brads 2, 3, 5 etc. or around a card corner it's the same principle you can evenly space them with the graph paper as your guide. It will also work for eyelet placement - just use a pencil through the holes to make a mark on your project and use your eyelet punch to make the hole.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn on the comments moderation feature.........I got a whole heap of spam comments overnight, so sorry if it's an inconvenience as I do love to get genuine comments on my blog!

Happy mail day!

I'm a little late with posting this as I received not one, but two beautiful RAK's on Friday! I got a little caught up in the excitement of going to the Melbourne Paperific Expo, which is THE event for all papercrafters to shop till you drop.......and yes I did do a lot of damage to my finances! Shh, don't tell my DH!


This 1st card is from Vicky, the card is beautifully coloured, I think she has used watercolour pencils and the leaf and flower centre are highlighted with a dimensional glaze. Gorgeous card Vicky!

This is an ATC from Rachel from The Darkroom Door. Rachel sent this as a thank you for sending her an extra ATC for a swap participant whose swaps went missing in the mail! Rachel has used Tim Holtz Distress Inks as a background for some of her own gorgeous Darkroom Door stamps...........lovely! Rachel also sent me a little prize pack of some of her robot photo chips and word strips for her blog competition for naming the robots...........I forgot to take a photo of those, but click on the highlighted words and you'll see them on The Darkroom Door's website!

Sorry, I have nothing new that I can share with you just now..........I have been working on some cards for a swap, but I can't show them just yet! I did take some photos for a little tutorial for you, but it's getting late and blogger is being really slow with uploading my photos right now, so I'll have to do it tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by!

Autumn Leaves.

I feel a bit strange about making an Autumn themed card as it is a beautiful Spring day here in Australia, but this is another challenge card! The theme for Cuttlebug Challenge #2 is for either a Halloween or Fall card, and as we don't celebrate Halloween here in Australia, I've gone for the Fall/Autumn theme. I've also used this weeks CPS sketch #86 as my layout.........well sort of, I turned the sketch on it's side and added some bits!

I used the Cuttlebug Swirls embossing folder for the background piece........the swirls kind of look like wind gusts, and I used Cuttlebug Autumn Leaf die-cuts. The leaves looked a bit too one-dimensional so I tried to score along the back of the leaves to create some veins, then inked them lightly with Colorbox burnt sienna chalk ink.

The stamped tree is by Inque Boutique and the tiny leaf stamp is from a Hero Arts clear set, the greeting is also a Hero Arts one. The background for the stamped pieces is sponged with Tim Holtz Antique Linen Distress Ink, the card is cream coloured. The stamped squares and backgrounds are cut and embossed using my Nestabitlity square dies. I distressed the large card layers and sewed around the edges with a rust coloured cotton. Ribbons and green brads finish the card off..........hope it doesn't look too busy!

Pink, pink and more pink!

This month Pernickety blog are having a month long challenge involving pink and babies. This weeks challenge was to use the sketch given on a birth announcement card with a decorated envelope. I can also use this card to enter the October challenge on the Fiskars blog, which is to use punches for embellishments.

I've used Bazzil Petunia card for my base and a light pink Core'dinations cardstock for the top layer. I sanded the Core'dinations layer and punched some different sized circles and a flower out of it. I sponged a bit of Tim Holtz Antique Linen Distress ink around the punched out bits..........I've still got a bit of a grunge thing happening today! I've backed some pink polka dot paper over the punched out areas, punched out a few more circles and a flower, stamped the greeting on some more circles and layered them on with dimensional dots. The little giraffe stamp is by Imaginesce.......it's just stamped with Versafine Vintage Sepia ink on the Core'dinations card and cut and layered.

I've sewn on a few buttons with paper string, added some lace and a couple of Kaiser pearls. I didn't have a greeting that said 'It's a Girl', so I had to use bits of stamps and an alphabet to make it. I used a Fiskars flower border punch down the long side of the card and glued a strip of the patterned paper on the inside of the card.

For the envelope I just glued on a strip of the patterned paper, stamped the giraffe down the bottom, stencilled a flower (from the same punch that I used on the card, just cut a punchie out of scrap paper and sponged ink through it), and stamped on a few dots and buttons.

I think I've excelled myself today with two cards in the one day.....and EEK! they're both CUTE! Might not get much done that I can show you in the next few days, as I have a few swaps that need taking care of soon. TFL!

Grungy cute???

This card is for a sketch challenge on the Penny Black Challenge blog. I keep telling myself I don't like 'cute' cards, but they seem to creep into my art when I'm not looking! The stamp is definitely 'cute', but I've tried to grunge it up a bit by using Basic Grey papers from the Blush range, and distressed the edges up. My background for the doggie image, it's actually called 'I'm so cute', is made using Tim Holtz Antique Linen distress ink.......I used the same ink for the background of the greeting circle too. I coloured the image with Marvy markers and a Dove blender pen. The circles are cut with Nestability dies.

Other supplies used -
Prima flower, foam flowers (can't remember the brand....just from Kmart).
Kaiser pearls.
Brown velvet ric-rac, staples, brown card.

Thanks for visiting!

Reindeer Christmas cards.

I've been wanting to try this method of embossing a frame onto a card by using a Nestabilities die ever since I saw it used on Nichole Heady's Capture the Moment blog. I'm happy to say that I've now done it...........and it is so easy-peasy!! I've used square dies on both cards, but you can use any shape die for this tech.

The instructions can be found on THIS LINK, they are for using the dies in a Cuttlebug machine, so may not work if you have a different brand machine. I found I needed to experiment with the thickness of card I used as part of the "sandwich", I think some machines are a bit looser than others, so what works in one Cuttlebug may be different in another.

I'm using these cards for a challenge on Ellen Hutson's The Classroom blog. The challenge was to use no additional cardstock layers, just a single sheet of card. embellishments were allowed. They also fit the Caardvarks challenge for an item that incorporates Scoring in a special technique.

I only needed a few supplies to make these cards -
Reindeer and celebrate stamps from the SU Reindeer Prints set.
Inks - Versamagic Tea Leaves for the green ink, and Brilliance Crimson Copper for the burgundy ink........you can't see it from the photo, but this ink gives off a lovely copper shimmer. I'm afraid I couldn't capture the ink colours well with my camera, they look much nicer IRL.
Kaiser Gems, Satin and grosgrain ribbons.
The white cardstock is by Pedigree Paper (Aussie company), I'm not sure what weight it is, but it's thicker than SU cardstock.

Click on the photos for a better view of the scoring/embossing.

I'm rather happy with how these cards turned out......simple, elegant and easy to make. I think I may do a few more of these for my Christmas cards this year.

Thanks for visiting today! Don't forget to click on my 'followers' link if you like what you see here......and comments are always appreciated too!

Do you want to be one of my followers?

........Don't worry, I'm not starting up some weird religious cult! I found a new blogger widget that allows fellow bloggers to follow my blog posts. You just need to click on the highlighted text under the 'Followers' heading on the left margin of my blog, where it says 'follow this blog', that's all you need to do.........couldn't be easier! You can then see my posts in the dashboard of your own blog, as well as other bloggers that use this widget, that you also follow. You can follow anonymously if you prefer that option, or use your blogger name and it will post your photo under the 'Followers' heading.

I think this only works if you use blogger, but you can still sign up for my Feedblitz updates if you don't use blogger. So come on, what are you waiting for......become one of my followers!!!................Please!!!

Cuttlebug Christmas card.

I found a brand new Cuttlebug Challenge blog yesterday...........guess it had to happen with the popularity of the Cuttlebug! This card is for the very first challenge, which was to use 3 different embossing folders on the one card.

I was given the red snowflake embossed card in a recent swap I did, so thought I'd add to it with the Swiss dots embossed piece, which I cut with my scalloped circle Nestabilities die......using my Cuttlebug of course! I also added two embossed borders from the Border Frills set.

All the embossed pieces are lightly brayered with white SU craft ink..........the messy bits just look like extra snow LOL! The santa and the greeting stamps are both from a Fiskars clear set, I've added a punched snowflake which I Kindyglitzed and added a Kaiser rhinestone.

Frangipani card.

This is another sketch challenge card for the Pernickety blog. Apart from using the sketch the instructions included using a monochromatic colour scheme, using a colour not in your comfort zone and using something metal.

Since I struggle to use yellow at all in my cards, a whole card of yellow tones was definitely out of my comfort zone! I really don't like this colour much at all, especially the bright tones! For my something metal I've used metal brads and a metal wire butterfly.

Supplies used:
Stamps - Frangi stamps are by The Darkroom Door, the greeting is from Heidi Grace.
Ink - Yellow cadmium Colorbox cats eye chalk ink.
Handmade yellow papers.
Kaiser pearls.
Nestabilities for the circles - yes, I did mean to layer them off-centre!
Lace, ribbon and a ceramic frangipani.

Tip: You can colour the pearls with a Sharpie pen in a colour to match your project.

Until next time,

Annika "talking" on video.

Annika came out with her very first giggle today so Jo and I were trying to get her to do it again for the camera, so we could prove it to her daddy........but nup! She wanted to talk though.......don't know what "Ah goo" means in baby talk, but she says that a lot!

TFL..........had to share this somewhere!
ps. I don't have a movie camera, just did this with my ordinary camera, so I can only take a short movie of around 30seconds.

Turquoise flower card.

I used the sketch challenge from Sandie's blog for this card. I like this colour combination of turquoise and brown.........I should use it more often! The flower stamp is from Inque Boutique, the swirl stamps are by Autumn Leaves and the greeting is a Hero Arts one - I used Versafine vintage sepia ink for all the stamps.

The cuttlebugged background uses the Cuttlebug Highlights technique from the latest Technique Junkie newsletter, October 2008.

Other supplies used are Kaiser rhinestone gems, brown grosgrain ribbon, turquoise satin ribbon, Bazzil cardstock...............and I've finally used my new Fiskars Water Threading Punch!

Thanks for visiting today!