...a 'new home' card and a mess!

I have some friends that are moving house soon. I decided that they will be the recipients of the first card I make. I'd had grand plans for the first card based on one in my card making book. However, when I started buying the bits to make it, I realised that I would very easily bankrupt myself if I did! Not that the individual bits were that expensive, but along with the other items I'd already bought, I was not only stretching my budget this month, I was properly breaking it. Because of this, I decided to simplify the design. I have two criteria for the cards I plan to make:

1. They will be simple and chic;
2. If I saw them in a shop, I would want to buy them.

Number 2 may seem a little odd, but for me, if 1. isn't observed, then neither can 2 be. Whilst there are some really talented people out there making very complex cards, they don't really appeal to me. I like bling as much as the next person, but sometimes less is more.
One of the things I love about my new 5 in 1 trimmer is the scalloped edge, which you can see in the middle here when I was testing it out.

I decided to use that as part of the card design. I also have the lovely red card in the back of this picture and planned the card to be a cream card, with a red front panel and a gold, embossed key on the front. So having assembled the necessary bits...

...I set about making the card. This was a really steep learning curve. The basics of the doing the stamping and embossing were fairly simple to perfect. It was the measuring and centering I struggled with. There are only so many pencil marks I wanted to put on the card. So having produced my scalloped edge, and my gold embossed key on red card...

...I attempted to combine the two. Not so very simple. I ended up making the pencil marks very small at the edge of the card and tried to line up by eye but managed to get it a mm out. This may not sound like much but on a small card (they're A6) it was noticeable. So I ended up having to make a second set of the above and went for putting pencil dots in where the corners of the red card needed to be. This it turns out works well, especially as I used foam pads to attach the panel to the card, so I was able to take a slice of my eraser that was thin enough to slide under the edge of the panel and remove the telltale dots! This is the finished card...

With of course my beautiful 'Andrea makes...' stamp on the reverse!

Feeling particularly pleased with myself, I then set about making a 70th birthday card for my friend Tony. Last week I also bought myself some fun bits and bobs from Paperchase.

I work on Tottenham Court Road so I'm really close to their flagship store. I'm already recognised by the sales assistant in the art section (I know this as she knew I had a reward card and asked for it as opposed to the person in  front of me who she asked if she had one!). I'm fairly sure that Paperchase is going to be named in the papers I file for bankruptcy.
On Friday, I'd done a search for ideas for cards and so have had a basic card idea percolating for the last couple of days. As I said, I like simple, so I did a drawing of my plan for the card.

One thing I can't do is draw! Whilst I may like creating and making things, drawing them is not my idea of fun! Anyway, I'd bought myself some gold and silver gel pens this morning and so using the pale blue card I'd bought in Paperchase I planned the text for my card and set about writing the letters. All went really well, until I realised that (a) I can't measure very well and (b) gel pens take a bloody long time to dry. Longer, it seems, than I allowed as I when I went to erase the pencil ines, I managed to smudge all the writing! Oops! Not to be deterred, I decided that I didn't like the plain silver anyway, there wasn't a great enough contrast with the card and so I used the rest of the card to try out an alternative colour/combination of colours. The result being...

I'd bought some glittery gel pens years ago when I made a scrapbook I made of a round the world trip I'd had and they've not dried out so I decided to use a combination of the blue one and the silver pen. Turns out I still wasn't any better at measuring and I still didn't leave it long enough to dry!

I did like the combination of the blue and silver though which you can see a little better in this cropped image...

Having smudged the writing a second time, I decided to use this card to do a mock-up of the card. I want the presents to be in relief but I didn't want to waste too much of the A4 sheets of glittery blue and shiny silver paper so I used a piece of the silver card that came in the scraps pack that I bought in Paperchase - can I just take a moment to recommend this. It was £1.65 and contains loads of small bits of card. The silver bits are perfect for me for this mock-up and there are so many other pieces in there I'll do loads with it, very good value for money! The mirror and blue glittery cards are actually self adhesive so for the relief, I bought a clear plastic sheet and so I'll make the present boxes from these with the self adhesive sheet stuck to it. For now though, I used the silver card and some of the glittery paper and mirror card for the ribbons on my trial run and this was the outcome...

This was a really useful exercise because my feeling is that the text needs changing. I think the letters need to be a little bit bigger and very slightly lower down the card. A thicker nibbed pen would be better as well. The presents should also move slightly lower down the card too. The scrapbook I mentioned earlier, I went back to the bag that I had all the bits in for it and discovered I owned a whole load of craft items I'd forgotten about. These included a small cutting mat, metal rule, craft blade, stickers and all manner of other fun stuff. I need to do some bows for the presents and the blade will be perfect for cutting them out.

However, at this point, as I messed up the only two blue cards I had, I'm now out of those (I'm going by Paperchase again tomorrow so can pick up some more ;-) ) but until then I've hit a roadblock.

This has been such a useful exercise and today I have learnt the following:

1. This is not as easy as it looks;
2. Regular hand washing helps as you get ink on your hands without realising and then smudge stuff;
3. Ink doesn't dry very fast;
4. Pencil lines can cause problems so I need to figure out a better way to line things up;
5. It will be so satisfying when I get it right!!

And when I do, I'll post you a picture of the finished article!