A life/craft updated and an Emoji Teen Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you all had a brilliant weekend - did you get up to anything crafty? I'm in the middle of a late spring clean of my crudy or is that an early autumn clean of my crudy?? The next few months are going to be very busy for me in a crafty sense so I'm trying to get my crafty nook tidied and organised - I'm only doing it a bit at a time because as you'll know if you're a regular reader of my blog, my crudy is very small and gets very hot and airless in the summer so I try not to spend too much time in it at once. I do a lot of my crafting after midnight (probably why my crudy has craft gremlins "No matter how much they beg - never let them craft after midnight." *winks*) which isn't really the most considerate time to start banging about whilst tidying. In all fairness a lot of my 'organising' is just opening boxes and finally labeling them and I tend to take them into the lounge so I can see better as the light is much brighter in there. The tidying part is finally letting go of most of the boxes that internet orders have come in. I don't know about you but I have a really hard time letting go of  boxes just in case I need them. I think part of this stems from the fact that when I was packing up my flat before I got married I had a real difficulty getting my hands on packing boxes and in the end I had to BUY some from Aldl's which I really resented as I didn't have a lot of money to spare. I'm having to make several mind adjustments to be able to let them go - it's a work in progress. Some boxes I will be keeping though, the smaller packing boxes are perfect for re-purposing and turning into pretty stamp storage. My lovely father-in-law is going to make me a one shelf unit that I can slide over my existing stamp storage on my desk so I can have two tiers of stamps stacked above each other which will be fantastic. I'm very much an out of sight, out of mind sort of person which is one of the reasons I'm labeling my stash and I'm also quite a lazy crafter too - if something isn't to hand I'll use something else instead. The other boxes I'll keep are the ones that DVD's come in quite often, they are only the size of a thick hardback book and have an attached lid, I like to store things like mica powders and pots of glitter and embossing powders in them as they fit perfectly inside and can be stacked on top of each other. I've also got one slowly filling up with goodies for a giveaway (I sometimes order things twice by accident so the duplicate goes in the box) but that's not going to happen until I get a few more followers (so if you're not already one please add yourself and tell your crafty friends too).

I have taken a bit of time out to do some crafting so I'd like to share the card I made for my step-nephew. It's his 19th birthday today! I find making cards for men and teens to be very challenging and I wasn't too sure what to make for Ross. I was hoping he was into Pokemon as I've seen some really cute cards on Pintrest but his mum says he's not into it so I decided to play safe and get out the 'Let's Play' stamp set by Clearly Besotted Stamps which is phone related - let's face it most teenagers are obsessed by their mobiles and I'm sure Ross is no exception! Another reason I wanted to make a card using this theme is because I got an emoji die set from Spellbinders a while ago and wanted to finally use the emojis I die cut out.

Emoji Card for a Teen - sorry it's a bit fuzzy

Slightly less blurry photo of card

Close up of the phone. The emojis have been glossy accented.

I added glossy accents to the sunglasses of the appropriate emoji and also to the phone button and the mini emojis on the screen - they were coloured in using a yellow Flex Marker. I made the background paper by stamping the solid emoji from the stamp set in Fossilised Amber Distress Ink, then went over them with the expression stamps. I stamped the phone stamp first before adding the emojis because I wanted to have a layered look. The raised phone piece was stamped on a separate piece of card, coloured and cut out using my new trimmer and a large corner rounder. The card blank was made using some black Centura Pearl printable cardstock from the Darks collection. I stamped a sentiment from a Crafter's Companion Sentamentals stamp set and added a kissing emoji to the inside of the card and layered the front as shown.

I hope you like my latest make, I really love the emojis and I'm glad that I've finally been able to use the ones I die cut. By changing the colours of the main parts it's very easy to turn this into a card for a girl teen (imagine rainbow coloured emojis!). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Ross likes the card and isn't too disappointed that it's a smaller size than usual - it's just because the phone stamp isn't huge and would be overwhelmed on an A5 size card.

As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx