What have I been doing for the last 6 months?

You may well ask! New Zealand has been in the grip of a global pandemic and for 6 weeks or so, we were in total lockdown - no socialising with family or friends, no group meetings, no shopping! Fortunately, I was able to go to the supermarket to get groceries, but it was certainly a strange situation. So what did we do?

Well, the garden looked good for a few weeks, before the autumn set in and the leaves started gathering on the ground. The craft room got a good going over and various bits and pieces sorted, tidied up or thrown out. Stamp sets were sorted and catalogued and fabrics sorted into colours!


I have done a bit of sewing and some card making. I have also made a couple of albums, which are awaiting completion.

Some of the sewing projects I have done can be seen on my Quilting page. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the most recent projects.

Here is a card I made for a teenager.

The card is  5" x 7" card and I used a skateboarder silhouette I downloaded from the internet for the image. I decided to do it in a grey colour rather than black as it went better with the other colours. The papers I used were from the Urban papers set from Close to my Heart. The stamp set used is Urban Flair, also from CTMH. The Happy birthday stamp is from a set from Ranger - Letter it Clear Stamps. I embossed the greeting with Weathered Wood Distress Embossing powder. It gives a dull finish to the embossing and is more suited for this card than a shiny embossing powder.

Cascade Card - How to make one!

This week was the first meeting of my craft group for the year. I had made a lovely Cascade card for a wedding recently (see previous post) and thought it might be fun to try doing one without using the Cricut to cut it out.

Here are two of the cards I made for the meeting.



































Instructions:

Cut 2 pieces of card – 6” x 8”

Measure down 3” on one of the 6” sides and make a mark.

Repeat for the other piece of card. 

Cut the top off the card from the top of the card opposite the mark down to the mark at 3” on the 6” side. Keep the offcut for decorations. Repeat for other piece of card.* You could use decorative scissors, edge dies or edge punches to do this.

Score on the straight 8” edge at 2”. 4” and 6” on both pieces.

 

On one piece, cut along the 2” and 6” scorelines     

from the bottom to about halfway along the scored lines.

On the other piece, cut from the sloped edge along the

 2” and 6” scorelines to about halfway along the scored lines.

 

Fold all the scored lines then slot the two pieces of card together with the shorter ends together so they form an interlocked concertina and can stand up.

Push the two sides together so both are sitting on the table evenly. If they will not do this, you may need to snip the cuts on the folds a little further. 

 

Cut two pieces of double sided designer paper at 6” x 8”. Cut as for the base card to *, with the back sides of the paper facing the other to provide a mirror image.

Cut each piece at 2”, 4” and 6” so they are the same size as the folded pieces of the base card.

Place each piece where you would like it, making use of the pattern on the reverse to provide a contrast. Trim a little (between ⅛” and ¼”) from the side and bottom of each piece so that when you attach it to the base card, there is a narrow border around each piece. 

Decorate as desired using stamped and die cut flowers, die cut labels, stamped sentiment as appropriate. You can add a panel on the back to write a greeting on and this will make the card more stable.

 

If you make this card, please leave a comment below. Thank you.