Bee Happy, Create Impossible Cards!

There is a new craze doing the rounds in the card making world currently for something called an Impossible Card. The irony is its really very, very simple and uses a single piece of card to make the card base.

I've seen designs that use USA A2 Size (4¼ x 5½), USA A6 (4½ x 6¼), 5" x 7" and a 6" square design and a few variations in between this website has templates for all the above, the ones I've made so far are both 5 x 7 because it was really easy to to mark it all out.

When you see an impossible card your first reaction is WOW how is that possible, the mind makes you think that the card must have been made using two pieces of card, but also makes you think its a single piece and has an optical illusion effect. The catrd is based on something called a Hyper Card, that was originally posted by a company called Bicycle who make playing cards.

To make my card I followed a YouTube tutorial by Sam from Mixed Up Craft, I actually found her tutorial and blog thanks to a lady who is a member of one of the same craft groups as me, I really couldn't believe how easy it was to make one of these cards and I'll be making more in the future. It's another card that will fold flat, so if you don't put much on in the at of embellishments, you can send your card as a large letter and save postage.

I made the "Home Sweet Home" card first and I got myself in to a bit of a pickle, I couldn't get the flap the card fold created to stand upright. No matter what I did it fell forward or backward 😕 There are 3 possibilities for the problem...

1) The cardstock weight was not strong enough, I used cardstock  that was only 160gsm and was therefore probably not strong enough to take the weight of the topper?

2) The topper I attached was too heavy for the flap. That said I tried adding a piece to the back of the flap but it didn't help stablise it.

3) I didn't fold the flap correctly. In  the demo video Sam folds in one direction half way, turns the piece over and folds the other side of the flap from the outside to the centre in the other direction. When I made the first card I turned the flap over and folded it all the same way.

When I made the 'Bee Happy' card I followed the steps and folded and creased in the same way that Sam did and my flap stood up perfectly and held the topper without falling over. I like the colours and image of the 'Home Sweet Home' card and didn't want to bin it so I made a couple of little hinges to glue to the back, this created the stability that the topper needed to stand upright. Whilst it wrecks the "How did they do that illusion?", it does mean that I can still use the card and didn't have to throw it away.

The bee topper and papers were from a "Making Cards for Boys" CD that came free with Making Cards Magazine in March 2017, I'd printed these off when I made the Colourful Monster cards back in February but the right idea to use them hadn't hit me.

I thought that the images would be good for an impossible card. I decided to add some Tonic Nuvo Crystal Glaze to the honey jar to make it look more glass jar like and I love the effect that the glaze created.

The topper and papers for the "Home Sweet Home" card are from a Crafters Companion "Makey Bakey Mice" CD and were printed off a while back, again waiting for the right project to come along. I decided against adding a sentiment to this card because the topper already had a sentiment on it.

I made the paper flowers from a leftover piece of the backing paper and a scrap from making the base card using the Card Making Magic Die Set 'Layered Florals' and finished the centres off with some 'English Mustard' Nuvo Drops. In hindsight, it would probably been better to use some distress ink to define the edges of the flowers after shaping them, but I was a little too eager to finish the card and by the time I thought about inking, I'd already stuck the flowers and leaves down. Below is the video I used to make the cards.

In other news a lovely card making thing happened this week, I've finally found a group of ladies that live locally that meet a few times a month to craft, chat and eat cake! I'll be going along to meet them and craft along with them on the 11th May, the lady that organises the events is a Stampin Up demonstrater, but she is foremost a crafter who it seems loves getting together with others to share the joy of crafting, I'm looking forward to it and getting together with other crafters to share inspiration. That's all for now, I'm off to work on a few more impossible cards, these cards are so impossibly I hope you have a go if you haven't already.

For the Love of Pets: Kitties & Bunnies

I'm on day 7 of no spending this month and day 9 if you add the last 2 days of Feb, and I'm loving finding treasure of all kinds in my stash, thank you to all of you who commented on my Miserly March post and were so supportive, it means an awful lot to have the love and support of such a super talented bunch of lovely people. I'd like to give a special shout out to Shabneez of Happy Hijaabi's Papercraft Creations for her kindly nominating me for an Altenew giveaway such a lovely surprise 💖💋.

This morning I completed a couple of cards using some digital images from the 'Lovely Jessica Collection' a free download back in January from Making Cards Magazine, you have to sign up to get the downloads but its so worth it, each month you get a email newsletter with a link to something to download, usually additional backing papers to go with the cover gift but sometimes something different. MCM is now the only magazine I subscribe to monthly, their free papers and downloads are brilliant and I can always find a use for the free gifts.

The backing papers on both my cards are from the collection, and they work fabulously together. I had to play with the images in Corel PaintShop Pro x8, I captured the image I wanted to play with and saved it as a jpg file.

I then took the jpg into the paint program and removed the surrounding images and resized it for my card and then printed it off, finally die-cutting it out with the largest die from my Wonky Nesting Ovals die set from Craft Stash.

I used another die from the set to cut an oval for the sentiment and the sentiments for both todays cards come from the "New Best Friend" stamp set from 'My Favorite Things'. I'll be using the actually images soon from the set, they are soooo cute, I'm going to make some cards for the craft fair in May for people to send when someone they know gets a new furry friend 😸 I used a leaf and the flower dies from a Crafters Companion set from their 'Floral Delight' Collection the die set is called "In Bloom".

I decided to make these cards a little bit special by adding a surprise inside in the form of a bookmark, I've done the same thing before in September 2017 using some cute 'Barry the Book Owl' images from Making Cards Magazine. I detailed how I did it in that post so I won't repeat myself, but you can follow the link if you're curious.

The bookmarks are super quick to make, and these images were just the right size. There's a cool bit of upcycling in these cards as well, I cut the ribbons off tops I buy and save them in a jar and use them for adding to bookmarks and for gift tags.

I think a bookmark card is the perfect accompaniment to a book gift voucher and its something to keep once the event the recipient has been given the card for is over. I've found lots of images for making more for young and old, I'm also going to make some with stamped images and attach the bookmarks to the front of the card like a topper. 

Before I go I thought I'd share a tip and I know this will be old news to most of you, but for anyone that is new to the world of alcohol markers and card making I thought I'd share... You can use  alcohol markers to colour sticky gem stones to match your project. Whilst working on these cards this morning I found the perfect gem for centre of the flowers for the pink version of the card, but I didn't have them in red. So I used one of my red Nuvo Alcohol Marker pens to change the pink to red et voila, the flowers got red gem stone centres!

I have clear gems in my stash just for this purpose, you can also use the markers to colour white ribbon and lace so it matches your project with your pens. I always colour my gems off the card on the acetate backing, that way you won't accidentally catch the card or paper you're working on, this I learnt from experience. Once you've coloured the gems set them aside for 5-10 minutes so that the ink dries totally, then attach the gems to your project as you normally would. Clear gems are better but if you are going for a similar tone pink to red, yellow to orange, light blue to dark blue etc. then any colour works.

Eclipse Cards A New Obsession

I hope you're staying in a keeping safe and warm if you're in the UK and gripped by the current winter weather from the 'Beast from the East'? It's currently -3 here, this time yesterday it was -5 so its warming up a little. the bad weather is set to stay for another few days according to the weathermen so its looking like this weeks Young Roboteers session will be cancelled, so I'm going to have some extra crafting time this weekend, which is a good thing, although I have to tidy the room first.

How does it get so messy every time I work on a project? I think its the craft room pixies, they come into the room when I'm not looking and throw everything everywhere, and they hide things, usually the exact stamp or die that I NEED to finish a project which causes chaos when you upturn the room trying to find the missing item, least that's my story and I'm sticking to it lol!

I thought I'd share a coupel of cards from my new found obsession today, which  all started a couple of weeks ago when one of the ladies in my favourite craft group posted a card she'd made using the eclipse technique. Suffice to say almost all of us that are members of the group have now a) become eclipsaholics, and b) invested in a 5cm Alphabet die set lol! I already have a couple of die sets, but they were too small and too thin for this technique, so I picked up a set from China via Ebay.

Not wanting to not be able to start until the full alphabet set arrived, I used the only die that I did have to hand, a HUGS set that was again from China and came inside a double letterbox style frame, the letters are 3cm tall and 2cm wide, the die cuts all 4 letters at once so you don't have to worry about spacing them out, its fabulous for making quick eclipse cards, I've used it to make a couple of quick cards already. For this first rabbit card above, I used an image from a free set of Woodland Animals that Making Cards Magazine provided last year. The images are so cute and they make lovely simple cards.

The rabbits and teddies above were in a free printed papers booklet with an issue of Making Cards last year, when I posted these photos on my facebook page I got lots of lovely comments which I was pleased to receive, but I did feel a little guilty because all I did was use a couple of dies and the toppers and added a bit of ribbon, its the gorgoeus images from making cards that make these cards look so lovely. Of all the card making magazines I much prefer the free papers and downloads that making cards give the readers, moe on that in another post soon.

Just before I finished writing this post my dies arrived from China, so I couldn't resist making another couple of quick cards, I had a few problems lining up the loose letters, but I managed it sort of. I've since thanks to a tip from a crafting lady bought a t-square ruler, waiting for it to arrive from China, so eclipse cards are on hold until it arrives.

I made my own card blank again using the Tonic 'Victorian Frame Layering Die Set', the image was a free paper download from Hunkydory from the 'Shimmering Watercolours Collection'. Note you have to be a member of the club to be able to download the papers, its free to join and you get lots of other benefits. I've seen some fabulous examples of eclipse cards in groups that I belong to on Facebook and on Pinterest, so I'm fueled with lots of ideas and as soon as my t-square arrives I'll be making lots more eclipse cards. Time to go an appease the craft room pixies now, I also need to bake something nice for the weekend, I can't decide on Red Velvet cake or Chocolate Orange Muffins, whatever it is I better do it soon or it'll never get done! Until next time, stay safe and warm and enjoy your crafting :)

Colourful Monsters

Hi everyone, outside the window its bright blue skies and sunshine, but go outside and its blinking freezing, that said I noticed more of the Spring bulbs are pushing their way through the cold, damp soil which must mean that Spring is in sight? Think I'll dig out some Spring and Easter stamps and dies and have a see if I can create something that will encourage the Spring along in the house.

I posted the other day about having a day off and spending it mostly crafting, I went a little nuts printing off things from CD's to use after Si installed a new DVD drive for me. The old one gave up the ghost and refused to even open anymore, apparently the bearings had worn out that allowed the drawer to open. The shiny new one means I can print things off again with a relish.

I have lots of CD's with images for toppers and backing papers, I've been using papers I print off to make cards for a while now, and I love the fact that if the images are not the right size or colour I can take them into Paintshop Pro and tweak them to get the colours I want.

These two cards are a perfect example, the purple distressed background was a free download - and I can't remember from where! - I decided that I wanted to make the same card but using the different monster toppers in colours to compliment both, but the background paper came only in the purple variant.

So I took the image in to my paint program and tweaked the colour, hue and intensity and shifted the colours over from the warm (red/orange/purple) side of the spectrum to the cool (blue/green/white) spectrum, it worked perfectly and looks almost like it was made to match in the beginning.

The monster toppers are from a "Making Cards for Boys" CD that came free with Making Cards Magazine in March 2017, it has over 120 papers (an assortment of backing papers and toppers) and includes the lovely dinosaur set that came free with the magazine last year. Again I made my own card blanks for these two cards, I can't believe I'd not done this before, I've made stepper and easel card bases so its amazing that I didn't, I really have to stop thinking that things are too complicated because each time I try something new, I realise its not as hard as I think it is!

To create these card blanks I used Lavender and Xmas Green centura pearl card stocks and a die from the Tonic Studios Bowscale die set. I cut the toppers and sentiment circles using the Creative Dies Plus Wonky Stitches Nesting Circles Die Set and backing it with a slightly larger circle cut from a plain circle in the same colour centura pearl that I'd used for the card base.

I'm trying harder this year to make more cards that can be given to male recepients, I find when I create without an intent or project in mind that I gravitate towards making cards for female recipients. So when I enter a challenge or I create a random card I'm going to try putting a male slant on the challenge or making cards that can be given to either a male or female recipient.

Breakout The Stash, It's Time For A Swing Out Sister Card!

Greetings from Warts n All HQ, its been a busy few weeks so I've not been doing much crafting or blogging, we've been away on holiday to France and I've also been organising the cupboards and trying to de-clutter rooms, well every room but the craft room, although really I should try to tackle that room lol!

Over the past few weeks I've acquired lots of jolly new stamps and dies from Lawn Fawn and Newton's Nook and some of the new Tonic Halloween range, so now I have some time on my hands I can Breakout the stash and play, you see where this is going from the title, right?

I've decided this year I'll be making pop up box cards for close friends and family, so I've been cutting the panels to create them like a trooper. I've also cut a few halloween themed panels and some for get well and birthday.

The boxes are quick to put together and I'll show a few examples soon in another post, but I couldn't help but want to try my hand at a new card type, I bought some dies from China off Ebay that were purportedly like the My Favorite Things Die-Namics Flip Flop dies. Only to be disappointed to discover that then don't score and cut like they should, they just cut, grrr!

I'm sure they'll have some kind of use in the future, but they aren't any good as flip flop card cutters. So I had to put my thinking cap on and find an alternative way of making a flip flop card, also known as a Swing Out card. It's really a lot easier than I thought, and you can use any die shape you care to, there are other versions of the swing out cards as well to try in the future that are more complicated than my simple design.

For my first ever attempt at creating a Swing Out Card I used some free papers and toppers from Making Cards magazine (October 2017), a set called 'Christmas Puppy', such cute images and I love the bright festive chevron striped papers, that accompanied the toppers. The toppers were so cute that I decided to add another on the reverse side of the swing out panel.

I finished the card off with a stamped sentiment panel that I stamped with 'silvery Shimmer' Tsukineko 'Delicata' Pigment Ink. It's a fabulous metallic ink which dries really quickly and unlike other metallic pigment inks, it doesn't smudge and smear once completely dried. A couple of snowflakes cut from white glitter card with some crystal diamanté gems in the centre added a finishing touch. In hindsight, I should have put paper on both sides of the Z fold, a point to note for next time.

As the first card went well, I wanted to make another, I have lots of the red metallic pearl card that I got last year but haven't used it yet, and its great for making card bases like these, so what better excuse?

I stamped and coloured the image on the second card whilst on holiday using my Altenew 'Poinsettia & Pine' set.

I gold heat embossed the corner decoration and the inside panels have sentiments on stamped in 'Delicata' Ink again, this time in the 'Golden Glitz' colour.

Whilst I was putting the card together I kept finding myself humming a tune, it took me a while to realise that the tune I was humming was from my early twenties by a band called Swing Out Sister, for all you youngsters who have no idea what I'm talking about, I've added a Vevo video of the song below. Music or not I think there will be a few Swing Out cards on my crafting horizon and using different shapes. Now back to chilling with tunes and putting the box cards together :)

Bookmark Gift Cards

I recently took out a subscription to Making Cards magazine and this morning my first subscription issue arrived, the free papers this time were adorable and I decided to make a couple of book themed gift cards with them. I decided a few months back that I wanted to start including something on or in my cards that could have a use outside of the occasion I was sending the card for, and book marks are the obvious choice, and partnered with a National Book Token they make an easy all occasion gift as well.

When my subscription issue arrived on my door mat this morning I fell in love with the "Barry the Book Owl" papers that came with it and quickly made 3 book marks and 2 cards, I still have some toppers and backing papers to put to use as well.

As the papers were in shades of red and green, they gave me the perfect opportunity to use up some of the 'Christmas' red and green card blanks that I'd amassed over the past couple of years, having found them buried in a box of card stash recently.

As you can see on the main image for the green card I created a pocket from the papers trimmed from the card to put the bookmark in. All the bookmarks are cut with an Avery Elle Bookmark Elle-Ment die that I got from Seven Hills Crafts recently. I decided to take the white of the bookmark down and used 'Vintage Photo' Distress Ink to age the paper and the edges of the bookmark. I added a suitable sentiment embossed in gold to this book mark, tied a little piece of organza ribbon to the bottom and tucked it in to its pocket.

The leaves are supposed to represent leafs of a book, I cut them from some paper with words on but when I stamped on to it it looked to 'busy' so I flipped the leaves and stamped on to the more muted pattern on the reverse and added some more distress ink to the edges and added them to the card with 3D foam squares. If anyone is interested the leaves were cut with dies from the Crafters Companion 'Scattered Leaves' die set and the wording comes from a set of stamps by Justrite called 'Antique Autumn Tags One'.

The second card I wanted to send a surprise to someone who has just done very well in their exams and I'm proud of them and wanted to send them a congrats for all their hard work.

I managed to disguise the fact that the card holds a gift by cutting two 6cm lines into the card front on my glass cutting mat which were just a little wider than the book mark (5cm) and used the piece it created to slot the bookmark in to the card, in hindsight it would have been better to place the slits a little higher up but I'll correct that next card. From the front you could see the bookmark because I'd used the same paper to back the bookmark with so it blended in nicely, but still I wanted to add a sentiment. So I decided to add a piece that was wider than the slot cut and attach it either side of the slot with 3D foam squares, so from the front you can't see what the card contains.

When you open the card on the inside you can see the bookmark, no adhesive or anything is necessary to hold the bookmark in place as the slot holds it firmly to the card. On the other side of the card I added another pocket that is as wide as a gift card and will pop the book token in there when I buy it later. I have already written the card for the recipient hence not showing that part of the card. I think these kind of cards are going to become a new addiction, they can be made for so many different occasions. By the way, the congratulations sentiment comes from a set of stamps called "Everyday Sentiments" that came free with Making Cards, if you missed that issue, the stamp sets are available to buy via their online shop. I'll add a post on how I made the pocket in the next few weeks, I just need to take some photos.