Author Archives: Carolyn

Leftover hearts?

01 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by in General occasion, Punches, Small Heart, Using up scraps

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Hi

The other day I needed to punch out some little white hearts for something else I was doing.  As you do!

It seemed a shame to throw out the strip of white paper with all the empty hearts I’d punched.    So I glued it onto another piece of card stock I had lying around and voila.  Really simple, but I think it works?  What do you think?

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A little green heart in the top right corner was a little extra touch.  I think the whole thing took less than 5 minutes to make.    Next time I’ll pay a little more attention to the spacing between the hearts though …

I’m sure you could do the same thing with a flower punch layered over some floral or spotty paper as well.    I think I might have to go and look at my punches in a new light now and see which other ones might work as cut outs or frames!

Thanks for reading

Caro

Another favourite card layout

26 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by in Beautiful Butterflies, Big Shot, General occasion, Tutorial, Using up scraps

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Hi

Just popping by for a quick post to show you another one of my favourite card layouts.   This one is also really simple – but because it’s a little different to the cards you usually see in the shops it can have a bit of a ‘wow’ factor.    But check out how easy it is to make!

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This is a gatefold card.   So when you untie the ribbon you get to open up the card to see the message inside.

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The dimensions will depend a bit on the size of your envelope!  My square envelope for this card was 14 cm square.  So I wanted to make a 13cm square card to fit inside.

This means I cut a piece of cardstock 26cm x 13cm.

To make a square card that opens the normal way you would just score and fold the long side at 13cm to make a 13cm square card.     To make a gate fold card you need to fold in from either side to make the ‘gates’.   So you score and fold at 6.5cm in from either end of the long side.

Here’s a little sketch to show you what I mean:

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And here’s another picture of the card showing a little more of the inside.   I’ve used some butterflies cut out with my Beautiful Butterflies die to decorate it.

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The strips of paper on the front are 12.5 cm x 6 cm.  And the strip at the bottom is 13cm wide – I can’t remember how high but it really doesn’t matter.    This layout is another good way to use up those little scraps of paper you can’t quite bring yourself to throw out because they are so pretty!

You can add the ribbon in a couple of different ways.  For this card I’ve just glued the ribbon across the back of the card.   You can also punch holes in the front of the card and thread ribbon through and tie a bow.

You can use this layout in so many ways.   I will try and post some more examples of cards I’ve made using this layout soon.

Thanks for reading!

Caro x

A music note card

18 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by in Big Shot, Birthday, Music Notes, Perfect Polka Dots, Wheels

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Hi

Just a short post today to show you one of my favourite card layouts.  I have made this in lots of different colours – this one is Stampin’ Up! Crumb Cake and Marina Mist.

IMG_1398 I used a Marina Mist C6 card blank and ribbon with a Crumb Cake card stock layer and ink.   The music notes come from a Stampin’ Up! wheel (“Music Notes” with a little happy birthday greeting.   I ran the top of my Crumb Cake layer through the Big Shot with my Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder for a little extra texture.

I’ve made this card with Night of Navy, Melon Mambo and Bravo Burgundy (now retired) – but I can’t really think of too many colours this wouldn’t work with!

Caro

PS This was a card I had wrapped up in a cellophane bag to give to an Op Shop to sell.  Next time I’ll photograph it OUT of the bag!

Simple – but stylish – gift giving

15 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Butterfly (retired), Full heart, Gift bags, Gift tags & wrapping, Punches, Small Heart, Using up scraps

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Hello!  Thanks for stopping by my blog.

Yesterday I showed you some cards I made using the Stampin’ Up! full heart punch.  I mentioned that you shouldn’t throw away the spare punched heart – and here’s why not.

After making the cards yesterday I needed a quick and simple gift wrapping idea to go with the cards.   Here’s a simple idea for a gift tag:

photo-5I used the cut out from the heart punch and another cut out butterfly on top (see how the wings aren’t fully stuck down to make it look like it’s flying?)   A little faux pearl and I think it looks perfect for a little girl’s present.

The tag is a mailing tag I got at Officeworks – you can get a box of 100.  I normally like making my own tags, but sometimes when you’re in a hurry this is a pretty good alternative!

I also have a stash of blank gift bags I get from $2 shops for this kind of occasion.    A few punches from card stock and scraps of pretty paper and you’ve got a lovely gift with virtually no effort.

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photo-4I think they look gorgeous (if I do say so myself!) – and certainly they don’t look the result of 2 minute’s effort.

If you don’t have any punches, you can still make a really pretty gift bag just by cutting pieces of paper to cover the front of the bag.

Have a look at some bags I made for my son’s daycare teachers last Christmas.  The designs were just cut out with scissors from some Stampin’ Up! designer series paper.

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Again, simple and easy – but really nice to receive 🙂

Thanks for reading

Caro

Simple card layout

14 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by in Butterfly (retired), Full heart, General occasion, Punches, Small Heart, Using up scraps

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Hello

The other day I had to come up with 2 birthday cards for some lovely little girls.  And I had about 10 minutes max to make the card and gift wrap the presents.  (Note to self: make a few extra cards to have lying around the house for card emergencies!)

One of the little girls had had a lovely time playing with my Stampin’ Up! full heart punch when she came to visit one time, so I’d bought her one as her birthday present.   So I wanted to make a card using that punch to give her some ideas of how to use it.

Thankfully I have a few fail safe card layouts that are fantastic when you need a quick card that is still effective.   I’m not sure what it’s called, but I call it a ‘punch trick’ card.  I learnt this from Sally Ann Williams, whose blog is definitely worth following for lots of lovely (and simple!) card making techniques.

Here is the card:

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You can see I’ve cut a heart out of the front of the card and then another heart out of designer series paper.  (Don’t throw the card stock away!).   Stick the designer paper heart on the inside of the card and it makes a heart shaped “window” which can look really effective for a simple card.

TIP!  Don’t try and glue the heart on the inside of the card and hope to have the punched window and the cut out shape perfectly align.  It’s much better to close the card and stick the pretty paper through the window.  Perfect alignment every time!

I used some ribbon, another full heart punch from DSP and a punched small heart and faux pearl just to add a bit of extra detail to the front of the card.

You can see a bit better from this picture how the window and cut out works:

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And here’s a picture of the inside:

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Don’t think this layout only works with hearts either!  You could try birds, cupcakes, butterflies – or make a window to highlight a sentiment.  It’s a great card layout for using up small bits of pretty paper you can’t bear to throw away.

Here is what the same technique can look like with a butterfly punch:

photo-6photo-8[Sorry, those photos are pretty bad.  Must get my proper camera fixed!]

I mentioned that you shouldn’t throw out the heart/butterfly you cut out from the front of the card.   Stay tuned tomorrow and I’ll show you why not!

Thanks for reading 🙂

Caro

Rugby “Jesse Mogg” birthday card

13 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by in Birthday, Home decorating, Kids cards, Kids party, Uncategorized

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Hello!

A while ago I showed you the invitations I made for my rugby obsessed little boy’s rugby themed birthday party.    The party was a great success and he had a ball.

He told me he wanted a Jesse Mogg birthday card (for those of you – most of you! – who have no idea who Jesse Mogg is, he plays for the Brumbies, my son’s favourite team)

Here is my effort:

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I used a paper cut out doll from a 2 dollar shop and coloured in the Brumbies colours.  Jesse Mogg is number 15.   A large oval punch substituted for a rugby ball shape – and he was very pleased with the end result!

In case any of you ever have to host a rugby/sports themed birthday party, I had a brain wave and turned a piece of green felt into a “field” table cloth:

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A few straws, some masking tape and some blu tak and we had some goal posts:

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I also have to show you the cake – I don’t even want to tell you how long it took to colour the blue icing and cut out all the letters!  My hands looked like Smurf hands by the end of it!

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Still – he had a *ball* (groan!) so all the effort was worth it in the end 🙂

Thanks for reading

Caro

Dinosaur punch art cards

13 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by in 1 3/4 circle, 3/4 inch circle, Birthday, Cupcake Builder, Kids cards

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Hello

Sorry for the long delay between posts.  Work has been very busy.  Add into that a 4 year old’s birthday party and some overseas work travel and there hasn’t been a lot of spare time lately!

I finally got to do some card making today though – with my 4 year old, which is always nice and can be challenging!  He is off to his friend’s dinosaur themed birthday party tomorrow, so we decided to try and make a dinosaur themed card.

We started by a little Google searching for inspiration, and he decided he’d like to try and make a dinosaur a bit like this one (made by Sandra Jayne Wingate).

First we tried a prototype:

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He was quite pleased with that one (as was I!) – but then he decided we could do better!

So here is Dinosaur Mark II – with added spots, buttons for nostrils and bigger whites behind the googly eyes.

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Here they are side by side:

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These were pretty easy to make.

The orange card blanks were standard C6 size.  The pale blue was cut 10cm x 14.3cm.

The dinosaur body was a strip of paper approx 1 inch x 4 inches (they are slightly different on each one as I was using up scraps).  The rest of the shapes were punched from Stampin’ Up! punches:

Head –  1 3/4″ circle

Mouth – Extra large oval

Eyes (on Dinosaur Mark II) – 3/4″ circle

Nostrils (on Dinosaur Mark I) – circles cut from the Cupcake Builder punch

Clouds – cupcake top from the Cupcake Builder punch

Spines & teeth – edges cut from a star punch (retired).  You could also use petals from any flower punch, the tip of the bird’s wing or tail from the Bird Builder punch or just cut some triangles from a strip of paper (or divide a square punch into 4).  You could even use the ends of the Modern Label or Word Window punches … the possibilities are endless really.

I hope the birthday boy enjoys his dinosaur card!

Thanks for reading.  I’ll try not to have such a long break before the next post

Caro

More covered notebooks!

02 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by in 3D projects, Notebooks, Uncategorized, Using up scraps

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Hopefully you saw my other 2 posts about using up left over paper to cover notebooks – either mini notebooks or larger ones.

Here is another idea – using a simple blank ‘jotter’ style notebook but making it a little more special with a bit of pretty paper and a ribbon.     These books take less than 5 minutes to cover but are so much nicer to have on your desk or kitchen bench than a plain old notepad.

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photo-4To work out the length of paper you need, all you need to do is measure the size of the notebook (measurement 1) and measure the size of the spine (measurement 2).  The length of your paper will be  1 + 1 + 2.   The width will be simply the width of your notebook.

You could just cover the notebook, but I like to add a ribbon tie to keep the cover closed when it’s not being used (and ‘cos it looks pretty!)

Again, this is very simple.  Turn your notebook onto the reverse side once covered, run a strip of glue (eg Snail adhesive) along where the ribbon will go and adhere.

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Once you have stuck on the ribbon, simply turn your notebook right side up and tie a bow!

Too easy 🙂

Rudolph bottle topper

01 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by in 1 3/4 circle, 3/4 inch circle, 3D projects, Bird Builder, Gift bags, Gift tags & wrapping, Large Oval, Word Window

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HI there

As you have probably noticed, most of my blog posts so far have been the result of sorting through all photos of things I’ve made and sharing them with you.  This post is similar!

At Christmas time we always seem to have lots of bottles of wine as gifts for family and friends.  (I’m not sure if that says more about them or us!)  I got a bit sick of buying bottle gift bags this year so thought I’d come up with something a little more personal.

The result was this little Rudolph bottle topper, and I think it’s pretty cute (even if I do say so myself!)

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I used some offcuts of Riding hood Red card stock I had lying around so didn’t measure the width but it was roughly 7 cm wide.    I used my largest circle punch to punch a hole for the bottle to go through and then scored below it and folded.

To make the Rudolph I used my small oval punch for the head, a 3/4 inch circle punch for the red nose, half of a 1 3/4 inch circle for the body, the ends of a word window punch for the ears and the leaves from the bird builder punch for the antlers.

I used a snowflake image from a retired stamp set to decorate the background, but any small flower stamp in white ink would probably look like snowflakes?

The bottles looked really cute under the tree with their little Rudolph neck covers 🙂

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Next time I might try making birthday or general occasion bottle toppers – I may never buy a bottle bag again!

Thanks for reading

Caro

Kids robot cards

31 Friday May 2013

Posted by in Cards, Decorative Label, Horizontal Slot, Kids cards, Modern Label, Owl, Punches, Small Heart, Tag, Uncategorized, Word Window

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I while ago my little boy was invited to his friend’s robot birthday party.  So of course me being me, I had to think of a cute little robot card I could make for him.     After a bit of hunting around on Google, I saw this cute little card by Teneale Williams (someone else who’s blog gives me lots of great inspiration).

Modifying Teneale’s idea a bit, here is what I came up with:

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I used some corrugated paper I found at a $2 shop as it seemed to be very ‘robot-ey’, but normal card stock would work too.

My little robots are put together out of Stampin’ Up! punches:

Head – Tag punch

Body – Decorative Label punch

Arms and ears – Word Window punch (Tip: glue a word window on the reverse side of the head to make the ears)

Legs – Modern Label punch or Word Window punch

Mouth – Horizontal Slot punch (this is retired now but you could use a smaller circle (eg the eyes from the owl punch), the candles from the cupcake punch, or cut down the word window punch or draw on a mouth)

Eyes – I used the eyes from the Owl punch with some googly eyes stuck on, but any small circles would work.

For decorations I used the Small Heart punch, the heart and waistcoat from the Owl Builder punch.   One one of them I stuck lollies on the body.

These were so fun to make I soon had a little robot army!

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