Everything Eleanor

A few weeks ago I commissioned to create a special wedding card for a friends father in laws wedding. Now when I make anything to order I like to get a feel of what the recipient likes are such as favourite colours, hobbies etc to enable me to make it even more personalised.  So with it being a wedding I asked what the colour theme was.... not a difficult question.  Well I nearly fell off my chair when she said there wasn't one as they were both in their 70's .... bless them.  So I decided to keep the colours neutral and chose to use Confetti Cream card and the Brushed Gold card  from the main catalogue.

You will recognise this card as I've recently done one similar but I do believe that for a special occasion you cannot go wrong with this particular style of card.   To keep in line with the Brushed Gold card I used Crumb Cake ink to stamp the image from Everything Eleanor onto the top layer of Very Vanilla card once the verse had been printed out and the layer cut to shape.   I coloured in the petals by lifting Crumb Cake ink from the lid of the ink pad with the Aqua Painters and then stamped the butterflies onto scraps of Very Vanilla card and cut them out.  The butterflies were added to the card using dimensional with Rhinestone jewels to decorate.  A Vintage Brad and Victoria Crochet Trim was used to secure the layers.

The lid to the box is similar to one I did a few weeks back for my sister in law to give to a friend but on this one I've added more Rhinestones to the centre of the flowers.  I was pleased when I saw my friend at work last week and she told me that everyone at the wedding had commented on my card and that the bride and groom thought it was lovely. There is so much negativity in life that its nice to receive praise every now and then don't you think?  I felt really good for the rest of the day.

Well I hope you've liked what I've shown you today and, if you wish to purchase any products mentioned above, or anything from the catalogue, then please get in touch, my details are at the top of this page.

Hugs
Tracy -x-

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all had a good Easter break.  The weather wasn't brilliant was it but I hope it didn't spoil your plans too much.  We didn't go anywhere as hubby was working yesterday and my back is tempreamental at the moment.  However we did see all the family so that was nice.

Anyone that suffer from a bad back, knee etc will say that either a  cold or hot pack helps with the pain.  For me its the hot pack that helps ease my back a little.  If I'm walking for a long period of time I will invest in one of those heat pads you can buy from the supermarket and that fit around you.  However, these can be very costly and you can only use one once.  

Since my back has been painful my mum loaned me a heat bag that you could put in the microwave, heat up and sit with it on the area of pain and it gave short term relief.   Unfortunately the one my my gave me split and all the filling came out.   Ok so was I not only appauld by this I was upset as it was my mums. 

So what could I do about it?  I know I thought, I'll make a new one out of the fantastic fabrics Stampin' Up! are selling, so I did.   However, before I made it I researched what I needed to go into the bag so that it could go in the microwave and heat up as it should.  I finally settled on using Cherry stones with a little lavendar oil and here is the end result:

Now because it was meant to be for my mum I wrote out a little message using the bigshot, timeless jnr alphabet set and embosslits dies.  At the time I did not have a sewing machine so all the sewing was done by hand.  Believe it or not its still going strong today but I need to make Mum another one now I have a sewing machine as this one is now well used

Just so you can see there is a slight difference in the colours due to the amount of use its had but my sewing is holding out well :)

If you would like to purchase one of these heat packs, machine sewn honest,  please get in touch as prices vary depending on size, personalization etc.  I have all the materials in the current catalogue and the spice cake fabric  that is currently in the spring mini catalogue.

Hugs
Tracy -x-

What a lovely morning we have today, a lot better than yesterday :) Today I am going to show you a card that I made for my friend and upline Victoria's birthday. I told you I had a lot to make at the end of March...lol

I had just purchased some of the vellum paper sheets from SU for the first time and wasn't really sure about the thickness of them. Well they are quite thin but versitile. If you remember I used one as a wrap over my mums Mothers day card and you could still see through it to the detail underneath. For Victoria's card I decided to try embossing one to see if it came out nicely and didn't tear the paper. Thankfully it didn't tear the paper but did come out nicely, here is the end result....

Now everyone who knows Victoria will know that she adores pink so what other colour could I use as her base card!!!!!  I embossed both corners of the vellum using the Elegant Bouquet embossing folder in the bigshot  and added little pearls to the centre of the flowers to give it some elegance.  I then embossed the butterflies using the Beautiful Wings embosslits dies to add a little colour to the card..  The sentiment is from the hostess set Happiest Birthday Wishes which has been stamped in pretty in pink ink and then punched out using the large round circle punch and layerd onto one of the shapes from the Perfect Pennants Bigz L Dies, again using the bigshot.  As you will see  I have wrapped the vellum around the card, as I did with my mums card, and secured it under the sentiment and on the back with a little bit of snail adhesive that you can hardly see, which is great.

Thanks for stopping by and looking at my work

Hugs

Tracy -x-

Mothers day pressie....

Oh my I can't believe its over a month since I last blogged, where does the time go???   I haven't been doing too much as my back hasn't allowed me to but I have made a few projects like my mums card for today and my grandson's christening keepsake for last Sunday but more of that another day.  One thing I was asked to do by my daughter was to make a 3d picture frame for my grandson's other mama, Julie, for mothers day.  She teamed up with her partners sister and they took their children to have a joint photo session so that I had one photo of all three to work with. 

Its difficult to make something for someone you don't really know as I've only met Julie three times and not really had the chance to chat with her too much.  However, her daughter said that the colour theme in her house was green and when she looked at my colour chart last weekend she said it was a similar collour to Old Olive so I had a bit of a starting point.

So I painted the frame with Gesso (not a SU product) and then, using a stamp from Vintage Vogue, I stamped around the frame in Basic Black.  I them used the smallest butterfly out of Flight of the Butterfly and stamped the image in Platinum shimmer paint.   I had a thin piece of rubber that came with my ink pad holder so I used the Beautiful Wings Embosslits dies with the big shot to make the smaller butterflies.  The shimmer paint was added using a dauber.  So that was the frame complete but I didn't get the actual picture until Friday so I wasn't sure what colours I was working with. 

Anyway once I got the photo I noticed that the main colours were dark blue and baby pink.  Now, using my colour coach I looked at what colours went with Old Olive and to my delight I saw that one of the set of recommended colours contained Pretty in Pink and the other set contained Night of Navy, how lucky was that!!!  Here is the end result.....

The base card was 12x12 Old Olive I then used a sheet of the paper from the Flirtatious Speciality Paper (pg 96) as the second layer and created the border with the Eyelet punch (pg116).  The next layer is Night of Navy and again I used the eyelit border punch.  The corners of the photo were created using the FancyFlower Punch (pg 118) and I cut a slit in the shape and put the corners of the photo through, this was a technique recently shown in a Demo magazine.  You can try it with any punch such as the curly label, square etc and see the different effects.  To make the flowers I followed a technique shown on another Demo's site here, where I stamped the sentiment En Francais on tissue paper.  I then folded the tissue paper 4 times and  used the 5 Petal Punch to punch out the shape.  I used some old olive card at the same time to give some stability as I punched the shape out, this was used as the base to the flower.  A brad was then put through the middle of all layers and the tissue paper crumpled up to create the flower.

The sentiment at the bottom was made using Very Vanilla card and Timeless Type Junior Alphabet die in conjunction with the big shot.  The little flowers were made using the Boho Blossoms punch.  Other materials used were buttons from the Regals collection, pearls and glimmer brads.

My daughter and her parterner were very happy with the end result as was his sister but the telling time was when they gave it to his mum as her present.   Luckily she liked it so I'm happy.   I'll be honest but whilst making it I thought I was missing out on something like this.... I need not to have worried as my daughters did a frame with 3 sections to it and the middle one was a photo taken of me and the girls last Sunday at Leo's christening and either side to that was little Leo.... I couldn't have asked for a better pressie, all my babies together.  I haven't taken a picture yet but when I do I'll show you. :)

Sorry for such a long post, I'll try and be quicker next time.  Til then take care.

Hugs

Tracy -x-