Having a happy day

With mother’s day around the corner, I have taken a break from Christmas cards and grabbed a different card kit (still trying to reduce storage space needed) to make my wonderful mum a card. Mother in law’s is made – she cross stitches too, so the little stitched bucket of flowers will be winging its way to Hull when His Lordship gets round to writing the card.

Although this card is a quick make and made from a kit, it’s a kit I like as it leaves plenty of room to be creative and put your own spin on your makes.

 I based my card on this sketch from Tuesday Morning Sketches (#234).

I have Pinterest boards of rectangular and square card sketches for those times mojo or inspiration is running low. I find them especially helpful when I have a kit and have been staring at a topper, unsure of how I want to use it. 

With today’s card, I liked the topper but as it’s big (95x95mm), I found it kept overwhelming my ideas for a layout. I felt the sketch I chose meant I was encouraged to keep the background relatively simple which best showed off the papers.

What do you need?

• Hobby House Sweet Blossom members’ gift from Create and Craft – this included my topper, background papers and the pearlescent card I used for matting and layering
• Kraft card
• 6×6 white card blank
• Peach crochet lace – mine was from The Works, I wish I’d bought two as I use it often and have only got 2 inches left
• Flat backed pearls
• Glossy accents
• Purple pen

How to:

1. Cut a piece of Kraft card to 145x145mm. Onto this layer a piece of peach paper with white polka dots and a piece of the floral striped paper from thekit, each measuring 140x70mm. Make sue the outside borders are even, if the central line isn’t quite right it doesn’t matter as you’ll be covering this.
2. Wrap a piece of crochet lace around the middle of the card, covering the join in the papers. I put a little bit of All Purpose glue in the middle as it would behidden by my topper and gives a but more stability, then I fastened the ends behind the card so the front looks neat.
3. Glue, or use double sided tape, your card front to the card blank. This is earlier than I sometimes do, but it means I then don’t smudge other elements.
4. Cut a square 100x100mm of the darkest (maroon, maybe) pearlescent card from the kit, and a scalloped edged square from the peach pearlescent card measuring 110x110mm – I used my Scan’N’Cut for this, but dies or pinking shears should work. I always hollow out my layers to save card and because I find by keeping the weight of the card front down it helps it to stand well.
5. Use the purple pen to ink the edges of the topper and both squares. Make sure you’ve trimmed any little notches on the topper where it was fixed into the sheet or these will soak in more ink and look uneven.
6. Layer up your squares and topper, then stick centrally on your card. I didn’t use 3d foam for this and the layters already made my topper stand proud, but it would work if you want lots of dimension.
7. Finally embellishments. I put a bow made of the crochet lace to the left of the topper, on the lace which was already there (I use All Purpose glue for sticking fabrics, I find it holds really well once dry, but it’s quite yellowy so be careful). I put 3 pearls in the bottom right hand corner, and finally I used Glossy accents to pick out the middles of the white flowers. 

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