The Magical Land of Oz

I am in love with the range of Wizard of Oz papers from Grapic 45. My children love the film, so I had to have every paper in the range. I think that the vintage look co-ordinates well with my recent blog freebie of bingo cards, so I have started crafting with them together. This is the first project I have made from the combination. It is a collage-style card, but also doubles as the cover for a desk calendar for a friend's christmas gift.

To make the two small panels featuring Dorothy and the Wizard, I cut the images from one of the Graphic 45 sheets then liberally applied glossy accents. When completely dry, I crumpled the glossy paper to crack the glaze. I then rubbed distressing ink into the cracks to highlight them.

The ruby coloured flower with the emerald centre is, of course, made using the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die. Liquid pearls were used to highlight the centre of the petals. I made it to resemble the poppies in the Graphic 45 image, which I also brushed with liquid pearls. I mounted the various elements onto a background of gingham paper to go with the Dorothy theme and added a red and white tab with ruby ribbon bow.

Using fabric Mod Podge, I layered the ruby velvet ribbon on the card and ruffled it to add more texture. I made a 'badge' from the Oz 'logo' and added another emerald gem. The whole thing was then generously spritzed with ranger bronze perfect pearls mist.

I made calendar pages to co-ordinate with this cover and fastened it all together with more velvet ruby coloured ribbon.

I would like to enter this calendar card into a couple of blog challenges:

Charisma Cardz 'cuties' challenge. Dorothy is a cutie isn't she?

Papertake Weekly's 'When is a card not a card...'

That's me finished now. I have to be in hospital by 7am in the morning for my operation. I may not be up to actual crafting for a little while as I may not be able to get out of bed to get to my craft stash (sooo frustrating when your head is full of ideas!!), but I will be working on digital goodies and more digital layouts for an album I am trying to finish by Christmas.

A Note of Thanks

As many of you will know, I had an accident back in June and that, combined with complicated health problems, means that I am unable to walk more than a few steps. This means that I am unable to either walk or drive my children home from school. This past week they have been collected by a new neighbour of ours who also has children at the same school. Usually, Claire would drive to pick her son up, but with her own three children in the car, she would be unable to pick my two up as she only has a 5-seat car. Because of this, Claire kindly walked to collect them each day, even though on Friday her son was not going home at the same time as my children, she still made the journey to collect Oliver and Purdey.

This has saved us a small fortune this week in childcare (plus it means that the our two monkeys came home straight after school rather than moaning about going to after school club). Claire would not accept anything for this enormous favour, so I have made her a little gift box and 6 notecards to express our gratitude. I don't usually do miniature, but it made sense as a gift to give mini notelet sized cards.

All six cards feature Pollycraft digi stamps and paper from my varied stash. The images are coloured with Promarkers and Flex Markers and then die cut with a selection of Nellies, Nestabilties and Lifestyle dies. The edges are distressed with the obligatory Ranger corduroy distressing ink and there has been a fair bit of sanding going on. There is also glitter, mica mist and stickles galore, both on the box and the cards. I made the envelopes as the cards are an odd size. I have used lick and stick envelope glue so that there is no need to use ds tape. They are still drying on my craft table, I am just hoping they will be dry soon so that I can package them up in order for the children to deliver them to Claire in the morning, along with a lovely bunch of peach coloured roses.

I would like to enter my project (which has taken about 15 hours to make!) into the following challenges:

Pollycraft's Anything Goes

The Pink Elephant's TPE123 Distressing

Papertake Weekly Challenge's Anything Goes (plus a bit of bling)

I just hope this loads as I am having hideous internet connection problems, compounded by IE8 crashing every time I try to load a page. I am using Google Chrome to try to overcome it, but still have an internet connection at the pace of a snail!

Shapely Card

My daughter is 5 years old. She has a boyfriend. It must be serious, they have been going steady for about 6 months now! She says she loves him because he is so handsome and sweet (which indeed he is!). Ahh, cute!! They are in the same class at infants school, so they see each other most weekdays, but rarely at weekends or in the hols.

Imagine my surprise then when she came home from school last week soooo excited saying 'Now I can see my boyfriend every single day'. 'How is that?', I asked her. Well, it's because his family have moved into the house across the street! Sounds like one of those cutesie teenage movies where the girl falls for the boy next door!

So, I needed to make a 'new home' card for his family. I never need much of an excuse to make a card and it is good to have a reason to make something other than birthday or Christmas cards.

And here it is...

I am really pleased with the mixture of curvy and angular shapes in the scallops and the houses, plus the roadway that I made in photoshop. I used offcuts from the punched scallops to make cloud-like shapes and made up a top-note shaped sentiment. With all of these shapes in mind, I would like to enter this card into the Papertake Weekly Challenge which is themed 'Get in Shape'.

I made a co-ordinating envelope as it is a very large card and I didn't have any ready-mades that fitted the bill. I added co-ordinating paper inside the card with an overprinted sentiment and more scallops just to tie it all together. I just love this ditsy daisy style paper from the very elegant Pink Petticoat. Even better is the fact that it is a digi paper, which means I can print as much as I need in a huge range of colours. I confess to sneaking it into as many projects as possible, along with their gorgeous apple and pear papers and the fab 'Grannies Wallpaper', all available in the same co-ordinating shades.