A marathon make!

A little while ago a friend of mine asked if I could make a card for her to give to her son for his birthday. She explained that she wanted something that would be personal to him and trusted me to come up with something suitable! I knew that he was outdoorsy and that he took part in a lot of outdoor fitness activities for both work and leisure. I remembered that my friend had told me all about this marathon that her son was going to take part in, in August. The Ultra-Trail Du Mont-Blanc is an approx. 2 day marathon around Mont Blanc, passing through Switzerland, France and Italy! My initial thought was 'Crazy! Yep, he's definitely got to be crazy!' but upon reflection I thought it'd make a great card idea, it would be something personal to him and hopefully make an impressive impact when he opened it.

So, I set to work researching what was involved and looked for ideas that would translate well into a card. I soon came up with the idea of using the route map as part of the design and envisioned a huge pop-up mountain in the centre. Now this idea was all well and good but a pop-up mountain in the centre of the card?! Could I really pull it off? I hadn't really done much 3D paper craft but I knew I really wanted to try it so, with much enthusiasm and a lot of trial and error, I set about creating my mountain. I made template after template until finally I found a method (and size of mountain) that worked perfectly!

The front of my Mont Blanc card.

I wanted the front of the card to have the appearance of a normal card, to not give away the secret hidden inside, without it looking too plain. I used an image of a runner and added the sentiment 'Happy Birthday' and set that on top of travel themed backing papers and 'Airmail' washi tape.

Once I had constructed my mountain I decorated the inside of the card by marking out the marathon route using eyelets to mark certain points along the way, I then threaded red cotton through to show the actual route. I completed the decoration with some more travel and map-themed backing papers and got everything constructed. Although it was quite bulky in the end I was rather proud of the finished article.

Upside down picture of the card opened flat, mountain in the middle and the route marked out.

The inside design was based on a travel journal and the idea of someone planning a trip with their maps out making notes on where they were going and what they needed to do.

Pop-up mountain!

To get a 'realistic' effect on the mountain I used pearlised purple paper that had a slightly crumpled effect and then added some silver/grey to the bottom. I trimmed around the mountain with grey ric rac and added some tiny little runners which I'd printed out and carefully cut out by hand. To represent the snowy cap on the mountains I added some puffy glitter glue to the points which added an icy, sparkly effect.

My friend was really pleased with what I presented her with and told me she had never expected anything so elaborate, she thought it was perfect. I've since been advised that it was received very well too and her son loved it so a success all round!

This is by far the most complex card I have made so far but I really enjoyed the challenge and was so pleased with the end result that all the time and effort was definitely well worth it!

S.x

The forgotten blog......!

Unfortunately this blog seems to have been long forgotten by both me and Jen, we've been so busy with every day life, as well as creating, that we've not really had the time to stop by and write! 

Since setting up this blog I have now launched my very own Etsy store! There's a huge amount of competition and I'm still getting to grips with making my shop the best it can be but I'm getting there slowly but surely. My etsy store is selling my handmade cards but I hope to expand in to selling other items if and when I pick up a new crafting skill. If you'd like to see what I've been busying myself with since I've been gone please stop by at Elmwood Cards  I'd welcome any feedback anyone has regarding my cards and/or the set-up of the shop :)

I have made a note to myself that I must try harder to set back some time for writing here and updating everyone on the makes I've been working on. I'll try my best to nag Jennie to do the same too as I know that she has made some great cakes since the last time she blogged!!

For now though, I'm just going to dig my way through all these craft materials and see if inspiration strikes.

S.x

Trying something new...

I have been experimenting recently with some 3D and pop-up cards, I started off with a simple pop-up design which I thought I would share with you. I am quite proud of it as a first attempt at something different.

I wanted to decorate the outside of the card so that upon first look, it appeared to be just a normal plain old card.

Card front.

I used two designs of patterned paper and arranged them in alternating squares as pictured above and then covered the joins with a length of pink spotty ribbon. I then affixed a paper doily in the centre and added a 'Birthday Surprise' sentiment.

Then to decorate the inside, I should have mentioned above that before decorating the card front, I made some slits in the card blank to make my pop-up elements. I decided that the inside was going to look like a room, decorated for a birthday party - or as close to that as I could get anyway! I lined the bottom of the blank inside with some wood pattern paper to look like a wooden floor and then used a green patterned paper for the other side.

Inside of pop-up card.

I decorated the centre 'pop-up' with a paper doily to act as a table cloth and fixed a present embellishment to the front. I had a small thin pop-up strip on top of the 'table' and added a birthday cake embellishment to this to create extra dimension and give a bit of a free-standing effect. The pop-up with the presents attached on the right in the picture, was perhaps a little too long as I had to reinforce it slightly. I then adorned the rest of the inside with little extras such a the balloons and then nervously closed it shut...but hoorah! Everything folded in on itself perfectly neatly so no worries there. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get any better pictures of the finished card before I gifted it but, I hope you like it and I was certainly proud of myself and my first ever pop-up card! :)

Playing with paper


Sarah: I have loved creating things as long as I can remember and unfortunately there are still some of my less artistic works (being kept as a reminder of my enthusiastic but ultimately dodgy, artistic attempts) knocking about within the family. I am by no means naturally artistic but I do enjoy (trying) to be creative!

My main focus at the moment is paper craft and, more specifically, card making.  I do have a habit of trying to attempt things far too intricate for my current skill level and often I do not know when enough is enough (is there such a thing as too many sticky gems??) so, I am currently trying to go back to basics and create a stock of cards that are simple to make and simple in design but hopefully still 'nice' enough in their own right. And so...we come to today's project, which has taken me approximately 30 minutes to make (not including any time wasted spent blissfully watching the snow continuously fall through the window.)

I started with a pre-cut and scored card blank (card blanks are easy enough to make but I'm lazy and I have a stash of pre-made card blanks all ready and waiting to be used so....), from a pack of Dovecraft rectangle - 105x148mm (250gsm). I wanted to print my sentiment directly onto the card so I played around with a few fonts and decided to use 'Anarchistic' and as I had already decided that my palette for this card would be green & white, I typed 'Happy Birthday' in green and went ahead and printed this straight onto my card blank.

Spray adhesive, printed card blank & die cut shapes.

As I was going for a simple card, I decided that I would just add one embellishment to fill most of the white space and since I don't use my Sissix Big Shot as often as I should I decided that the easiest way to do this would be with some die cut shapes. I cut four scalloped circles in varying sizes from two different types of patterned paper that I thought complimented each other well.

3 of my die cut scalloped circles and an example of the font used for my sentiment.

Next, the potentially messy bit! Using spray glue (before using spray glues, cover your work area and then cover it a little more, just to make sure you're not going to end up accidentally sticking anything you don't want sticking - a passing nosey pet for example!) I fixed the biggest circle directly onto my card blank before matting the other circles, in size order, on top of that until I ended up with this:

Scalloped circle card almost finished.

I think the card looks pretty nice as it is but 'simple' doesn't necessarily have to mean 'plain' so I decided to just go a little bit further and add a border. Nothing fancy, just a freehand doodle border using a generic fine line green pen and a lime green Letraset ProMarker.

And here we have it, the finished article:

Scanned image: completed scalloped circle card.

As I mentioned above, I'm planning on trying to put together a stock of simple cards so, as I work on making these I will post them here. I hope you like them and thanks for stopping by! :) S.x

Tea, anyone?

I tend to bake a box of cupcakes and decorate them according to a certain person's taste. One of my friends is a bit of a tea addict (just like myself...) so I decided to make her some tea-themed cupcakes (picture below)

I decided to stick with a pretty floral theme, so I decided to decorate three of the cupcakes with a sugarpaste rose. These are something it has taken me a while to master, but now I feel like I could probably make them in my sleep!

I then decided to create a sugarpaste teapot (which to be honest I am very pleased with, this was my second attempt at making one, and it seemed to turn out well) and a matching teacup. As it turned out, she loved these two cakes in particular, until she held the box out to offer one to a friend, and they took the teapot cake. Then her partner gave the teacup to the dog!! Never mind!

I am getting into the habit of creating a "gift tag" on at least one cake per box. Call it my trademark if you will :o) Somebody said the other day they could tell a certain box of cakes was made by me, I took that to be a compliment, and hope it didnt mean that I am predictable in my decorations!
I am a big fan of decorating cupcakes with flowers, so am always pleased when asked to create a box for women rather than men!

I tend to use buttercream on the majority of my cupcakes. This is not only because many people seem to like the buttercream, but also because I do think it looks nice, and the decorations sit nicely on top. I occasionally create a sugarpaste disc upon  which I can place an edible decoration, such as the teapot and tea cup.

First Time Blogger!

Jennie : Wow where do I start? I guess I should explain when my love of baking began!

I never really had an interest in baking when I was younger, and actually it took me until the age of 25 before I realised it was something I wanted to do. I remember the box of cupcakes I gave my best friend as part of her christmas present. At the time, I was so proud of them. But now, I look at the picture I took of them, and I cringe because they look like such a half-hearted attempt!

Ever since then, I have regularly baked and decorated cupcakes as presents for friends and family. I have tried to improve my baking and decorating skills each time and would like to think I've improved tenfold since the above picture, but I still doubt my skills every single time! I think the problem is, it doesn't matter how many times people tell you they like your work, you will still doubt yourself and won't be 100% happy with it.

I will use this blog to show you some of my favourite creations from the last year or so and will make personal recommendations on my preferred methods when baking/decorating cakes.

I hope you enjoy looking through my photos - looking through them is a nice reminder of how far I've come, bearing in mind I have only ever had one cake decorating class.

The box of cupcakes I decorated during my class, which I got to take home to show off to my family and friends! :o)