A Midsummer Day's Christmas Card

Hi everyone!

It's a rainy weekend here in Singapore, so I had every reason to stay in and catch up with my stack of craft materials that I've neglected for weeks now. My husband and I have finally made an offer on a flat, so fingers crossed that it'll be the end of our house-hunting season soon!! Yayyy!!

Although it is still officially summer in most parts of the world, today I made a cool, crisp and icy looking Christmas card. Not that I'm preparing for Christmas just yet--in actual fact, I still have some countless number of cards to make before August comes, with the myriad of people around me that somehow decided to have their birthdays in August (which includes both my parents, whose birth dates are just four days apart. Pheeewww!).

Anyway, Donna of the Cards for Men blog posted her No. 14 challenge, which is Christmas in July. As I was looking for inspiration, I bumped into Caz's, Deb's and Lynn's blog, Cute Card Thursday, and their challenge for this week is also to get a head start for Christmas cardmaking. Well, two reasons for creating Christmas cards in July is good enough for me :)! Using the CPS #176 sketch from the lovely team at Card Positioning Systems Blog, I created this card.


I used a digital stamp that I created last Christmas, which is a snuggly, furry winter bear holding a bell and a candy cane. I hand drew, scanned and saved the image as a PNG object, then printed it on a heavy 200 gsm white paper before coloring it with Faber Castell watercolor pencils. I really liked this image but since most of the Christmas cards I created last year was either vintage or bold looking, I did not have the chance to use it.


I also used two sheets from my English Roses digital paper pack. So as most of the materials for this card were digital, I also decided to post this card for the the Something Digital challenge that I found in the Stamp Something blog.


Instead of using the usual pre-folded card blank, I made a gate-fold card using American Crafts' AC Cardstock in Lagoon. After adhering the background panels cut from my digital papers (printed on heavy 110 gsm inkjet paper), I used a wide 2" blue satin ribbon for embellishment, before adhering the stamped bear as a topper.

That's all for today, would love to write more but as always, weekends always bring a bunch of ironing for me :). Thanks for visiting!

Much love,
F

My Grandma's Birthday Bouquet ♥

Helllooooo...

Wow, two weeks went by so fast and I did not even realize that I have not posted anything in more than two weeks. More than two weeks, people!! Amazing as this translates to, of course, two weeks without crafting, cardmaking, taking photos or writing. Pheww.

Well, I have a pretty good excuse for being MIA, though. My husband and I are on the hunt for another apartment as we need to move out of our current one by mid next month. I have mixed feelings about this; partially excited over getting a new place to ransack :D, but also slightly saddened as this house is, after all, the first house we've lived in after we got married :(.

Anyway, I'm sure it'll turn out for the best and we'll find a great place soon :).

Two weeks ago was my husband's birthday and just so happen that we were invited to one of our friends' wedding in Indonesia. (And this means that hereafter, on every 3rd of July, I will have to make a birthday card for my husband AND an anniversary card for my friend :P)

As much as I would like to post the must-have-been-lovely photos that I would've taken at the wedding, since I had to leave the office late that day and headed directly to the airport, my darling husband had forgotten to pick up our camera from the house :( :(. This is despite him knowing that disuniting me from any types of camera on a holiday can and will send me on a catastrophic tantrum that costs him no less than a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough to subdue.

The day after the wedding was also my grandma's 78th birthday, so while we were there, we made our way to her house to celebrate. It was a great party as most of my mum's entire family was there, which doesn't happen often.

The birthday party reminded me of one of my fondest childhood memories, which was staying over at my grandparents' house on almost every weekend. I remember that every time I walked into my granny's bedroom--where I would sit for hours listening to her stories--I would smell the Yardley English Rose fragrance that she used to wear. And I would really, really love it.

Even now, every single time I visited her house (although she does not wear the same perfume anymore), I think that I can still smell the scent in my head. Frankly speaking, I suspect my unexplained fascination of English roses was cultivated by this memory somehow :).

Needless to say, this birthday card was made with the same inspiration--English roses. Yeah, yeah, I know, I've been creating so many rose-themed cards recently, but what can I say :), I really adore them.



The backing paper I used was one of my digital paper set, English Roses, which I finally finished designing after a month (yayyy!!). I printed the topper using a clip art from the digital set and cut out the circle using my Marvy Uchida Clever Lever circle punch. Then I adhered the circle on a punched-out scallop circle cut from recycled paper with my Woodware Scalloped Circle punch.


To finish off, I cut a piece of white printer paper with scalloped scissors and glued it on the backing paper, and stuck the topper on a 2.5" blue satin ribbon, which has been tied loosely to give a knotted effect.


Chic and simple, don't you think? Perfect for my beloved grandma :).

That's all for today; it's quite late now and my eyes are neither closed nor open, LOL. Tomorrow is a new day, hopefully with some good news on our house hunt. I'm off now and see you soon!!

Much love,
F

Happy Birthday Super Star!

Do you like sports? I don't. Wait--let me just rephrase that--I detest sports. My husband (or my poor, poor PE teacher back in the days) would have to either drag me by the feet or bribe me with a ridiculous amount of money just to get me into my trainers and burn some kilos. The closest thing to sports that you'd see me do is listening to the occasional snippets of World Cup 2010 coverage from the BBC's World Service (yep, I don't even like watching live sports on TV, LOL).

What I do like, though, are challenges. Just like when one of my cousins turned seven a few weeks ago, as it was the first time I created a birthday card for a boy.

I was browsing through my favorite craft shop--UrbanWrite--for ideas, when I came across this lively American Crafts' Junior patterned paper collection. Perfect for an active young fellow.

But what do you know, since I don't exactly adore sports, nor have I done any design with this theme, I didn't have any stamps or embellishments that would go with it. So as I got home, I only managed to sit still in front of my desk, doing nothing except for staring blankly at the cute patterned paper.

An idea popped into my head a couple of days later, irrelevant as it may be, when I was washing my hubby's Judogi (which is, by the way, an incredibly bulky uniform for judo, made from tremendously heavy fabric. Can you imagine how physically draining it is to hand-wash this thing?? Thank god he only practices once in a blue moon nowadays). I decided to make my own hand cut topper from a plain cardstock and embellish the card my self.

I cut a jersey-shaped topper from a red cardstock, adorned it with white stripes and a number "1" from plain printer paper, and stamped the name of the birthday boy on the jersey.


The topper turned out to complement the paper perfectly, but as I thought the card still looked pretty plain, I decided to make a mini "medal" that says 'Super Star'. Perfect for a star of any field!

I adhered the topper onto the patterned paper, and attached it on a red pre-folded cardstock with golden brads.

Although I must say I am quite proud of myself for creating this sporty card :), I do hope that one fine day something can change my mind about sports, that I'll be more active, that I'll be healthier and that at least I'll lose some weight :P. But for today, I guess this card will just have to do!

Much love,
F

CPS 173 - Woven Ribbon Birthday Card

Hello there!

I couldn't believe last week went by so fast, but what's worse is, now the weekend is almost over! Pheew! My husband and I went house hunting almost all of yesterday, so between doing the laundry, making Macaroni Casserole and cleaning up our second bedroom-cum-my craft studio, I have not been able to get my usual dose of crafting :(. It has also been raining cats and dogs here in Singapore for the past few days. This morning I woke up to the sound of a blazing thunderstorm, which, to my regret, has soaked all the clothes that I washed last night!!! Aaarghhh!!

As some of you probably know, the creative folks at Card Positioning Systems always release a new challenge every Saturday. Their sketch this week, CPS Sketch 173, is clean and simple--which is a style I quite like. Here's my take on the sketch:

It's my husband's birthday next week and since we're going away for the weekend, I thought of making a birthday card for him :). But since he poked around the studio when I was making this card, I think I may have to dismiss that idea and create a new card for his birthday now, LOL!

The original sketch included six ornamental squares at the side of the card, which I was going to create using patterned paper. But at the end, I decided to weave a piece of cream satin ribbon into the cardstock topper. I cut twelve slits on the bottom of the topper and wove two pieces of ribbon into the cuts; one piece from the right end and another from the left.

As a finishing touch, I tied the ends of the ribbon to a wooden ring that I bought at my local haberdashery store (which is a treasury for amazing cardmaking finds!!), and embellished the knot with a brown plastic button, tied with a piece of jute string.

Here's the list of materials I used for this card:

Cardstock: ArtFriend pre-cut cards
Topper: American Crafts AC Cardstock Caramel
Patterned Paper: SEI Poppy Espadrille
Stamp (for sentiment): Anna Griffin by All Night Media

Well, that's all the crafts for today and I'd better get back to doing the ironing now :(... Hope all of you had a great Saturday and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Much love,
F

Another Father's Day Card :)

I'm back with another Father's Day card!

As today is Father's Day, for this week's cardmaking challenge I made another special card for all dads in the world :).

Today's card is inspired by a sketch designed by the folks at the CPS blog, and I must admit, when I saw the sketch, I thought it was a bit challenging as I don't usually do asymmetrical layouts. Nevertheless, the sketch turned out to be really fun to work with, and although I intentionally left out the arrow element, I am quite satisfied with the design :).

Having the same theme in spirit, I also submitted this design for CardsforMen blog for their Father's Day challenge.

So what do you think of it?


I found a pre-folded cardstock at the bottom of my craft-supplies drawer, which was handy because its baby-blue color matched the feel of the patterned papers that I used. The patterned papers were from my digital paper pack collection, For His Eyes Only, which will be listed on Etsy soon. Follow FebruaryLane on Twitter if you want an update of when it's listed :)

I was also excited about the sketch because it had a circle element, which meant I could use my new Woodware scalloped circle punch :) :). I bought the punch when I went to the UK three weeks ago, but I have yet to find the chance to create anything with it.

I used the scalloped circle punch to make the recycled-paper base for the topper, which I printed on an ivory 80 gsm parchment paper. The image is of an antique beetle car that I had edited using CorelDraw with oil pastel effect. I used jute strings (I know, I know, I use too much jute in my designs) to tie the topper to the patterned paper and adhered them on the baby blue blank card.

Okay, that's all for today, I really have to go to the library and return a book before I get fined :). Wishing all of you a great Father's Day and hope that you can celebrate this special day with a man who is very dear to you!!

ICSketches #70 - Happy Father's Day!

Hi again!!

Well, as if this week has not been busy enough, I managed to squeeze in another cardmaking challenge on my agenda--although it meant neglecting my poor husband who has just sprained his ankle two days ago. Apologies, love.

Anyway, this week's card sketch was provided by Inspirational Card Sketches, and I thought their Design Team has put together an array of wonderful examples using the sketch. Here's a glimpse of the sketch:


As this coming Sunday is Father's Day, I decided to make a Happy Father's Day card using one of my digital paper packs.

Here's my take on the sketch:


I printed the digital paper pack using an inkjet printer on a heavy 200 gsm cardstock. I designed the topper using a cool photo of a classic car taken by Michal over at Sxc. I gave it an 'ink-pen sketch' effect in PhotoShop and recolor it in Corel Photo Paint to bring out a vintage feel.

I printed this topper on a 110 gsm ivory parchment paper, which emphasized the 'rugged' feel of the design. Then, I adhered the print out on a rectangular craft foam for a lifted effect that accentuates the topper.


As always, I think jute never fails to give an amazing touch to any card. So when I ran out of paper after cutting a few miscalculated pieces (although the good thing about digital papers is that you can always print a few more!!), I reached out to my left over jute bundle and found a scrap perfect for the job :).


After putting the pieces together, though, I still felt that the card was still too plain for my liking. Thus, I decided to give the honorable task of embellishing to a pair of brown plastic buttons, which have done the job quite well, I think!

If you are wondering, the digital paper pack that I used was a kit that I created for my Etsy shop, although I have not listed it yet. This kit is called "For His Eyes Only", and as the name describes, this is a very masculine, rugged yet classy kit of 8 digital papers, which you can use to create digital scrapbook, cards or other crafty stuff for a beloved guy ;).

Here's a peek of the pack:


So that's all for tonight's challenge, pheww, I can't believe tomorrow is already Friday!! Wooohooo!!

Much love,
F

CPS 171 - English Bouquet

I have been a HUGE fan of the CPS - Card Sketches blog since I started making cards a few months ago.

However, being the biggest procrastinator that I am :), it is not until now that I decided to play along with their weekly card sketch challenge. So here goes!!

This week's challenge is CPS 171, sponsored by Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps. Here's a peek of the sketch:


And here's my creation today:


I used a cardstock that I actually bought for father's day cards that I planned to make before I went to Europe, but that plan never rolled out in the end ^_^. Hence, I was left with a few masculine-themed cardstock and papers, but it turned out that this grayish-blue color worked well with the topper.


In case you are wondering, the topper that I used is from my English Bouquet Digital Paper Pack Set that I sell on Etsy. It's not listed as yet since I haven't finished designing the entire range, LOL. But you'll be able to view (and maybe buy a set ;D) them in a week's time or so. Follow February Lane on Twitter if you'd like to know when it's listed :).



The three diamond-shaped embellishments were made from hand-cut jute fabric, which is perhaps officially my 'signature' material by now, LOL. The rose was one of my hand-made 'scout' roses (I call them 'scout roses' because I learned how to make them when I was in the scouts :D), made using crimson and moss-green satin ribbons. The sentiment was printed on recycled paper.

That's all for tonight, I will come back again next week with new posts!

Much love,
F