FINALLY!!! Blog Challenge Cards

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook. I hope you have all had a brilliant weekend, we are bracing ourselves here in the UK for a spot of nasty weather with freezing conditions and even lightening storms forecast in the coming week, there's a possibility that it may last until the middle of March which isn't good news. If it is as bad as predicted then I may not be blogging as often because I'll probably invite my mum to stay with us. Our flat is a lot easier to heat (hers doesn't even have central heating just ineffective wall panel heaters that are designed to heat unused rooms to prevent pipes from bursting!) even if it's not in town like hers is (making shopping challenging - thank goodness for being on a bus route AND internet shopping!). If she does stay over she'll be taking over the lounge as we don't have a spare room but the put you up bed is comfy enough and we have spare bedding etc, the downside of it is that the computer is in the lounge and I like to write blogs etc late at night and my mum likes to go to bed early so unless I change my writing habits I'm not going to be able to add blogs like usual. Of course she may choose to stay at home so it might not even be an issue - watch this space!

Let me apologise to all my readers and especially to my fellow blog challenger Michele for the delay in getting this blog post up. Michele sent me photos of her gorgeous cards more than two weeks ago and it is totally down to me that they've not been shared before now. There were some extenuating circumstances (losing my mojo, then one of the finished cards, running out of batteries then getting new ones not realising that re-chargeable ones need to be charged before first use lol) but I should still be more organised when it comes to crafting (and most other aspects of my life really). Anyway we'll start with Michele's gorgeous creations.

Michele's first card is the CASE card and is copied from the one on page 67 of the magazine.

Isn't it lovely? Her second card is her non-CASE card and is a very sweet Christmas card.

I love the way Michele has managed to turn a very floral embossed image into a frosty Christmas design while still retaining the wreath elements. I absolutely love the silver snowflakes - very apt considering the forecast and a great addition to a card that would be perfect for batch making (you could use different colours for the embossed panel - white would look stunning especially if it was a shimmery white cardstock such as Centura Pearl hint of silver).

Here are my two cards - my CASE card is more an inspired by than a true CASE card as I wanted to make it into an easel card and I didn't have some of the components needed such as the scalloped circle die cut and the same card stock colour.

My inspiration

As you can see, the butterfly, flowers and placement on the embossed image are the same as the inspiration card but I used Core'dination card in green and sanded the embossed image back using some sandpaper. The flowers, leaves and butterfly were diecut out in white then coloured in using Promarkers. The easel card was made by folding a piece of white card in half and placing it on a Bigz circle die with the folded edge slightly below the cutting area so it didn't cut through both layers at the top. It makes an imperfect circle but as another circle of the same size was layered on top, you can't tell. The easel part was made in the usual way.

As soon as I saw this magazine freebie I knew I wanted to make a non-floral card with it. One of the things I dislike about the freebies you get with craft magazines is that they often lack originality - around half of them are floral, a quarter are Christmas and the remaining quarter cover everything else like men's cards and kids. I'm not actually a huge fan of florals as I like to make cards that reflect the recipient's personality (hobbies, favourite colours, animals etc) and flower cards seem a bit generic in my mind. Stars are gender neutral so a bit of a favourite for men's cards if I'm unsure of their likes or if I don't have anything suitable that they would like (for example it was my brother-in-law's birthday on Friday and he likes penguins and tartan - both are Christmas items and I couldn't get what I had in my stash to work on a birthday card so I made him a card with a starry background and a spaceman with a die cut star on the sentiment). This card was a good way to use up some of my scraps too as I die cut a lot of various sized stars to cover the floral elements of the embossed wreath. The wreath was embossed into some navy blue Core'dinations card and lightly sanded to highlight the wreath. The stars were die cut out of scraps of holographic card and the tiny stars were punched out of rainbow holographic card - in that case I used the perforated strip from the top of a 6" x 6" card piece taken from a paper stack (The Works, sadly no longer available as it was only £1.50 for 24 sheets of foiled card stock including the rainbow holographic card, I really wish I'd bought loads of them now!) I stuck the stars over the floral elements of the wreath as shown and added some of them with foam squares for added interest and also a scattering of the tiny stars on the unembossed areas. The sentiment was from my stash and heat embossed directly onto the topper piece.  It says reach for the stars but isn't very clear as I don't own any fine detail embossing powder. I made matching envelopes for both my cards using my envelope punch board by WRMK.


I hope you like Michele and I's cards - it was a really interesting challenge as neither of us CASE cards very often and I love the way we both chose to make non-floral cards for our second cards. I'm not sure what our next challenge will be - I think I might 'challenge' Michele to come up with a theme. Once it's been set, I will share it on here. 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