I had a good excuse to get out the heat tool and embossing powder again - to make a birthday card for my friend Kate. I've always wanted to do this as a gift, give a handmade card with earrings on the front.

wedding card

How's this for a bit of weekend fun - flying off to Melbourne at 0-dark-hundred hour in the morning (read: early!) for a WEDDING. Where's the downside? Where there's always one, and in this case I can't take my beloved as he has to stay home and mind the ankle-biters. However I've decided to be a bit adventurous (read: crazy!) and take a mini book with me to journal in and leave spaces for photos while I'm gone. My sister, who is accompanying me, is apparently taking student assessments and uni assignments with her so there may be time. We get back Tuesday. Oh how I'm going to miss my little family.

Happy Birthday Dave

This unusual looking piece of card I found at the 'SA Stamping and Scrapbooking Fair' yesterday contains textured stripe on one side and black on the other. I thought it would be fun to have black on the inside of the folded card instead of the usual white. I used my white Signo gel pen to write the inscription and used white chalky ink on my foam stamps for the "h" and 'b". I gently sponged Tim Holtz distress ink on the front cover to bring out the stripes and rubber stamped the main image onto recyled cardboard packaging. It was attached with foam mounting squares to give the 3-D effect. The other images, the text and flower, were stamped last with the same white chalky ink used earlier. I like the result but need to practise the new technique. I learnt it from the teachers at "Seriously Scrapbooking" yesterday. This is going to revolutionise scrapbooking for me as I'm interested in making my own papers and papers for layouts and cards.

Giving card sets as gifts

This is a collection of cards I made to fit some little square envelopes I needed to use up. I printed some greetings and images onto vellum and cropped them into squares... they can then be mixed and matched on to any of the cards. Everyone uses cards so it's a great idea for a gift. I'll definitely use this one again. The cards were so small they fit into a clean baby formula tin which I decorated. More on this in another post.