Trying my hand at card-making!!

I find I'm always in need of Thank-you cards, and with my parents 51st wedding anniversary coming up next week I thought I'd try my hand at card-making. Even my little girls joined me and made pretty cards for their Oma & Opa's anniversary. Here are a few of the cards I made and one that Chloe made......

To make this card I used the gorgeous Hibiscus flower crystal packet by ZVA Creativehttp://zvacreative.com/, it comes with a transfer sheet that allows you to move the image quickly and easily to your design project! I used some water colour pencils in the insides of the crystal petals and leaves and then used a lightly dampened Q-tip on the penciled area to get a watercolour look. Here are some close-ups...


Another Thank-you card I made using these pretty gold/bronze flourishes and green (center) bloom by Zva Creative......

I used a the paper tearing and inking techniques I've been using on some of my layouts and the corset stitching to make up this card. For the edges I used the Martha Stewart lace edge punch. Here are some close-ups.....



And this is an anniversary card I made for my parents upcoming 51st wedding anniversary. I found these cute glitter flourish stickers at my local dollar store. The card design was inspired by the fabulous shabby-chic style of my friend Paulien Vandenbosch http://paulienvandenbosch.blogspot.com/, she makes the most gorgeous cards you've ever seen. Here is my try at her style.....

I used some white pearl colour dimensional paint to make the 'pearls surrounding the '51' I made the circular "Happy Anniversary' tag with my Microsoft Works Word Processor. To do this you simply open a new document in word, ....along the top of the page there is a toolbar, you'll see a large blue capitol 'A' (on a tilt), click on this (it says 'insert word art'). Type the words that you want to go around your circle, for mine I typed 'happy anniversary' 3 times with 5 spaces in between. Now if you look to the top left corner you'll see a box that says 'Plain text', if you click on this a bunch of images will come up, click on the one that has a black circle outline. This will place your words into the circular format. Now if you click on the box with your circle of words you can stretch the circle to whatever size suits you by clicking your mouse pointer on the dots surround the design. Now you can print the design out on any colour or patterned paper, I used scallop edge scissors to cut mine out...here are some close-ups.....

And lastly, my daugther Chloe made up this card using some left-over kit goodies from my February My Creative Scrapbook kit.....she also used some pretty black crystal flourishes and stick-on pearls by Zva Creative.....

Here are some close-up pic's of her card (I thought she did a beautiful job of it!)....


I have to say I thought I'd never get into cardmaking but the girls and I really enjoyed making these! and what a great way to use up some left-over smaller scraps of papers and embellies!

Gabrielle xx