Very Feminine Card

Here is a real girly card made for a birthday for someone in the family a while ago. I normally try and make cards ahead of time so they are ready to use when I need them. This one was no exception hence the date on the watermark!

The centre flower is made using a bottle top flattened in my cuttlebug, then topped with a punched paper circle and ribbon flower.

I used stickles on the background paper and dimensional pearl paint dots on the lace.

The frame was given to me in a RAK (Random Act of Kindness). It was dry embossed with the swiss dots folder in the cuttlebug then covered in glossy accents.

28 Cards with 4 Sheets of paper and my Cricut

I created a one sheet wonder file on Design Studio using Plantin Schoolbook based on the template by Scrapoholic on the Cricut messageboard and cut 2 pieces of patterned cardstock and 2 bazzil card. Some of the cutting lines are out of the boundary but they are easily cut with a pair of scissors. Then I made a whopping 28 cards with all the cuts!

I tried to make many of the cards both normal and tent fold so they would be more versatile and I left room on most of the cards to stamp a sentiment later as the cards are needed. I used a couple of the layouts from Scrapoholic, but most of these ended up my own design so I could make as many cards as possible. I also embossed some of the plain card and only used 2 packets of flowers to keep the cost down.

Feel free to use the cut files and scraplift card layouts for your personal use only. Link photos of your cards here so I can see them.

Click here for the Design Studio File

Click here for the Gypsy File

Free Business Cards to Download and Print

I know many of you crafters out there are selling at markets and fairs so business cards are a great way to get your name out there. They can be expensive to have made for you and when you only need a few so why not try making them yourself?

I create my own business cards using microsoft publisher, but then I found these sites where you can make your own then save and print off so I wanted to share them with you.

Business Card Star Prints 8 or 10 per page, lots of designs and colours to choose from. Easy and quick to do. Allows you to move text and change colours and even lets you print on the back of the cards if you want to. Here is a sample of what you can do.

Business Card Land A sister site to the above link that also prints 8/10 per page

Free pdf cards Plain cards with a picture or logo you can upload

New Arrival - in the Pink!

We have added a new baby girl to our family recently, hence the lack of blog posts. As you can imagine life has been very hectic but I am looking forward to getting back to blogging as things settle down and we get into more of a routine.
Naturally you can expect to see a few baby related creations. I managed to find some time while waiting for bub to arrive to get some sewing and even knitting done. So once I get them photographed I can share them with you. Until next time, bye for now.

* Clip art above from http://hubpages.com/hub/baby-clipart

Chocolate Lace Butterfly Cake

Here is the cake I made for my friend’s 40th birthday recently. You may remember the tri-shutter card I made for her that I posted previously.

The cake is 14” square, weighs over 5 kilos and took me several hours to assemble!

Inside the cake comprises of 1 layer of vanilla sponge topped with 1kg of nutella chocolate spread, 1” thickness of fresh whipped cream followed by another layer of vanilla sponge. That was then covered with lashings of my nutella and chocolate icing and decorated with chocolate lace swirls, chocolate lace flowers and chocolate lace butterflies! The butterflies were the most difficult to make with the wings and body of the butterfly made as one piece. They were very fragile and needed to be supported until the chocolate had set completely.

My friend was speechless when she arrived to pick the cake up. I thought she was going to cry! A number of guests at the party ended up taking heaps of photos of it for her as she didn’t want to cut into it! I would love to hear what you think.

40th Birthday Tri-shutter Card

I have been wanting to make one of these tri-shutter cards for so long and finally did. My friend really likes blue and butterflies and is not very girlie so I knew it would be a challenge to make without being too flowery. It took me over a week to finally put it all together as I really was not sure about the papers being right (not my usual choice) and In the end I just left them and they have grown on me.

I gave it to my friend on her birthday recently and she loved it. She is only very new to papercrafting and was honoured to receive my first tri-shutter card.

There is a tutorial here for making one of these cards, but if you are fortunate enough to own a cricut expression cutting machine and design studio, Okielady has a cut file and step by step instructions you can use to save time measuring and cutting.

For decorating this card I used Teal Embossing powder, cuttlebug corner swirls, a peel off butterfly sticker, quickutz scalloped ovals, stamps, prima flowers and of course some bling!

Cup Cake Stand Doilies on My Cricut

It was my friend's birthday recently and I managed to find some time to create.

I cut huge scalloped doilies on my cricut to use on a cupcake stand. There was not enough sections on the stand for all the individual cupcakes(over 50) so I made the doilies to make room for them all.

I designed them on the Design Studio software program for the cricut and used the accent essentials cartridge. The doilies have a small hole in the centre for the stand and a slit so they can be removed and replaced without tearing the paper. I needed them to be fairly plain and not too fussy as they were for my friend’s 40th and she does not like pretty girlie things.

I also made the nutella filled chocolate cupcakes to go on the stand. They were bite sized cupcakes only 1" tall and really rich and delicious!