Happy Father's Day!!

First it was a chance to make your mum  feel special and now its a turn to make dad feel special. Well....i don't really subscribe to the idea that you need a special day to tell your parents how much they mean to you. But....that said......its always nice to celebrate an occassion....isn't it!! :-) So after trying my hand at a flower pot for the first time to make a mother's day card, I'm trying my hand at masculine cards. Last time i tried a CAS masculine card but this time i decided to try harder. You know, its kinda difficult to think of masculine card layouts and embellishments. I must've gone through a gazillion blogs and videos on youtube to get a hang of how to make and embellish guy cards!! Finally this is the outcome...it isn't even close to what a lot of crafters out there have made.....but its my first and so special to me.....just like how dad is the first guy i knew in my life and so very special to me!

I tried a few new things/techniques while making this card - distressing the edges of my card stock, making the rosette (is that what they're called??!), using those massive buttons and making those windows with patterned paper stuck to the back where i put in the alphabets for the word "dad" (is that a technique....don't know....have seen some crafters try it and so i tried it too! :-)).

In the pic below I've tried to capture the distressing i did on the paper edge. So basically I used cream card stock as the base and then layered it with another piece of cream card stock. The edges of the top layer were distressed using an exacto tool. And then also distressed with some distress ink.

Then I cut out those three windows (not sure if you can see that in the following pic) and adhered patterned paper to the back.I wanted it to have a pop up effect, but that didn't work out. I know what to do for that the next time. :-) And then of course I used those alphabet stickers for 'dad'.

The rosette was made with a nice patterned handmade paper that's been lying with me for atleast 5 years!!! I hoard!! I confess. The words "World's Greatest" are traced and written over with a black pen. I used vintage photo distress ink to distress the orange circle on the rosette. Distressing is really fun and gives such an amazing effect to paper. Need to buy more distress inks!

The buttons that you see are from my granddad's old coat. My granddad passed away a few years ago but I have very very fond memories of him. He was probably the best a grand dad could ever be and I know that his son, my dad, will be the same for my daughter!! :-) The best part is that my grand dad saw his great granddaughter (my daughter that is) and spent some time with her before he left us. Using those coat buttons was my way of remembering him and also putting them on this card to dad will definitely make my dad feel nice too. The three chevron strips that you see were cut out from a larger piece of patterned paper and adhered to the base patterned paper.

Another picture of the whole card.    

Entering this into the following challenges:

Lulupu - My First Love, My Dad Challenge

Card A Day Blog Challenge - World's Best Dad

Creative Cutting Challenge - Father's Day Cards

Another Best Wishes card!!

Here's another best wishes CAS card that I made. I hope you like it. Not much to write about. I just wanted to use that pink patterned paper desperately and thought I'll use the sketch at Simply Less is More challenge and also play along their challenge. Oh and btw...the banner is traced and so is the sentiment. I used some water colour pencils to give it a slight pink shade!! :-)

A close up of the banner and the sentiment!

Best of Luck!!

I've been thinking of making a 'best wishes' card for my brother who's going off to Wharton to do his MBA this fall. He's going back to studies after a long hiatus and he's going to be gone for a long while now. I thought something bright and cheery should be a good idea. I wanted it to be a CAS card and masculine. I saw this week's sketch on CAS on Sunday challenge and decided to use their sketch for my card and play along with their challenge too! :-) 

This is the first time I'm making a masculine card. I'm not sure if there are any limitations on what kind of colour to use for a masculine card. I definitely knew that pink may not be acceptable as a masculine colour, but I really wanted to use this yellow. So if any of you know more about masculine cards and what should go into making one, please do put in a comment at the end!! :-)

 A view from the front.

I've used a patterned paper on the top and then cut 4 strips of paper from another pp and stuck it onto the first pp. The row of numbers that you see are from another stack of pp. I used the same pp to add a strip to the inside of the card too! The sentiment is traced and written over with a black ball point pen. 

Happy Mother's Day

Hello there.....I'm back after a brief lull.

Being a new entrant to the crafting world, a lot of my time goes in thinking......thinking of designs, layout of a card, what papers to use, what card stock to use, how to embellish etc.

When I saw the Lulupu Challenge - My Mum, My World and the Crafter's Corner - BINGO challenge (I've used Patterned Paper, Flowers, Stamping) for this month, i kept thinking of what new to try. There's so much for me to learn and so many new things that I can try my hand at, I really got confused. Anyway, I finally decided on making a flower pot card as my Mother's Day card. I've never made a flower pot card before, this is my first time!!

So the challenge with this flower pot card was that I don't have any flower embellishments in my stash!! So I had to make all the flowers by myself. I've really been inspired by some recent flower making tutorials that I happened to come across on some blogs as well as on You tube. Its amazing how some work with paper can give you such beautiful flowers!! I've tried to co-ordinate the colours of the flowers and those of the polka dots on the patterned paper. But of course, the space was so limited that I could make only 5 mini flowers.

The inner card, once you pull it out. There's a stamped blue butterfly next to the sentiment which is not very visible in this pic.

So here's a pic at another angle so you can see the butterfly.

A close up of the flowers. The pink carnations that you see here are thanks to the idea by Indira at the Lulupu blog. They are made using tissue paper. The orange flower on the top is inspired by the flower made by Isha in one of her posts over at the Lulupu blog. The other two flowers are also inspired by ideas of some talented women in the blog world!!

Another pic of the card.

I have always been intrigued by the different types of albums made by a lot of talented ladies out there in the crafting world. I always wanted to try making one sometime. And finally I tried my hand on a mini star shaped album....yay!!!! The thing about these crafts is that, once you get a hang of it you just don't wanna stop....you wanna go on and on and make as many as possible.

I happened to come across this star shaped mini album tute over here and here; and I think its a great idea. What better ways to preserve memories than to do it with an album that can stay open on your table for you to enjoy. I really really liked this concept and am looking forward to making many more. It can be such a great gift for near and dear ones!! :-) 

I wanted to play along at Itsy Bitsy challenges in their Colour challenge. I think the combination of blue, green and neutrals is amazing and very eye-catching. I was really inspired by the album that Sunehra has made over at the blog. I think its beautiful and a huge thanks to her. 

So here come the pics....this is my first attempt at an album so please do bear with any mistakes that I may have made and if you are reading this then please do leave me some comments and suggestions to improve. I don't have paper trimmers or score boards (p.s. I am getting them really soon....and am so excited!! :-)) and so my lines I think were a bit skewed. I wanted the album title to say "US" and u see that on the cover.