Mamie Rae

Monday 21 March 2011

Blue butterfly girl...

Amazingly in between fighting with 3 websites all needing tons of work and helping my folks shift home, I managed to work through another of these awesome cards.   Without a doubt they're the nicest ones I've made to date and are worth every minute of the up to 3 hours I end up spending on making them - I know they shouldn't take that long but I'm a perfectionist and so keep on working on trying to improve them and spend ages upon ages just playing about with the colours and flowers etc to try and get the best look.
 



And I've made a nice little box to go with it too which is a necessity as no way are these cards ever going to fit into an envelope :).  This time I've used K & Co papers coupled with baby blue binding ribbon and Guipure lace as well as flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts,   In the absence of blue flowers I opted for a deep lilac type that almost look blue and worked quite well.   The yellow rose just lifts the overall colour.  The white pearl buds are from my own stash.  Finished off the front with a few more butterflies and some white adhesive pearls.



 
I covered the base with another complementary paper – to be honest, I’ve no idea where I got this one from but have it in my digital collection so quite likely off a CD somewhere.   I cut a blue oval from navy card to complement the navy scallop and stuck a white oval onto it framing it with a gold peeloff, on which I then put a foiled greeting and another little butterfly to finish that off. 



And finally (well, before I made the box at any rate) I made a tag and put it into a little cover on the back which really looks the part.

 
The box was easy to make using a scoring tablet with 1 inch depth and covered with a digital paper.  Haven’t got details to hand but could get them for you if you’re interested in getting it.

All in all, a truly beautiful card IMHO but then I’m biased LOL.   This one will also be available in my Ebay Shop – but only 1 available so don’t wait too long if you want it.

Monday 14 March 2011

Hacker problems...

Going to have to take a week or more away from my cardmaking to put a ton of efforts into sorting out the mess a nasty hacker has caused in hacking 2 of the 3 sites I manage - thankfully he chose to entirely delete my own card site (www.kitsandcards.co.uk) rather than either of the other more important ones but nonetheless it will take me hours now to rebuild my own site up once again as while I've got backups of the data I don't have any of the entire file structure or all the changes I'd made to template structure and modules etc some of which I actually wouldn't even know how to replicate, so am pretty much going to probably have to create an entirely new site or rather 2 new sites as I also have my Feline Diabetes site inside my own as a subfolder and again files on there that I can't even think where to start with recreating.   What's worrying me more is that I had some personal files on there too precisely because I presumed it was a safe place to store them as a backup and can't even remember what ones they were now :(.   Not good.

Truly do not know what possesses these hackers - one thing to hack a site for a statement but another to just maliciously delete everything for the fun of it!!   The more annoying thing was that he left his "signature page" which has this message stating that he's only hacked the site to reveal security issues and hasn't deleted anything yet in this case that's exactly what he has done.

So you know why there won't be too many more new cards going up here for the next week or two - apologies but I'll try and get normal service resumed as fast as I can.

Tuesday 8 March 2011

1st card of the new range

Finally got this card finished & photographed.   Been a long time in the making in every sense – first saw this style about 3 weeks ago, and was utterly captivated, then had to look at my stock and see what I could put together to make anything remotely similar to what I’d seen.    Then had to go and invest in yet more stock (flowers & punch) so that blew my NY Resolution of not spending other than on necessity stock right out of the water!!
Just in case you're unsure, it is another easel style card  - didn't take any side views of it. I used beautiful papers from Cutting Edge Crafts, the punch is MS Scroll Lace which I amazingly got cheap on Ebay (£5 as opposed to the more usual £10+).  Scallop & circle courtesy of my friend Cindy, flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts (as they seem to be the only stockists around who deal with so many types in so many sizes),  branch punchies, & adhesive gems from Ebay.  I made the sentiment tag  using another diecut from Cindy’s stash & just cut an inner oval from another of the papers, finishing off with a peeloff border & foil sentiment.   Made the tag cover in similar fashion and just popped a blank white handmade tag & ribbon into it – depending on the final destination of the card, I might create a new tag for it, or print a greeting on it.
Oh and of course – the most important element – the decoupage is a Morehead babe – decoupaged up to 3 layers so reasonable height but given the height of the rose, it’s not even coming close.  

Overall, I’m hugely pleased with this card and hope to at least repeat this one a few times so if you’re interested in getting one let me know quick as I’ll probably only have stock to make 3-4 and won’t be repeating it after that.  But this one is now available on Ebay .  However, as the title says – it’s the 1st one of the range, so watch out for similar ones shortly.   Got 2 other more important family orders to supply which will keep me busy for the next week or two – hand arthritis doesn’t allow for speedy card making any longer.   Proving hugely painful to make any at all, but keeps my mind off my pain to some degree at least.

Enjoy

Saturday 5 March 2011

More my usual style

Really getting way too obsessed with my new designs and only managing to get 1 card a day made if even which is no good when I have requests by family for 30-40+ which I really need to get fulfilled soon.   But I'm so enjoying creating the new special ones - not quite ready to unveil them just yet so in the meantime letting you see my more usual designs.   As I said, I tend to veer more towards decoupage designs and this is one I made using a vellum wrap with a Morehead fairy.   Difficulty with these types is that I can't recreate them easily as I can't get the wraps in quantity - only ever manage to get 10 different designs so just have to use them as I can and move on.

Anyway - hope you like it.