A very productive few days.

I was lucky enough to finish work on Wednesday afternoon for a few glorious days off and decided that I should really get started on making some cards. I have so many birthdays and anniversaries coming up in the next couple of months, usually I only have 1-2 occasions to make for but I have 17 over the next 3 months and I need to make a headstart!

However, sometimes things don't always go to plan. Here is the first, created for my boss for his birthday on Sunday, although I have now found out that he does not celebrate his birthday and is particularly touchy as he is 40 this year so I guess this one is going back in the box ready for another male birthday - I always have trouble striking the right balance on men's cards. I created a template for the background, cut it out of Doodlebug dotted swiss and doodled the coloured frame on the outside to tie it in with the pre-made greeting.

I then became distracted from the task at hand and made a couple of others, not for any particular purpose but just to pull a couple of ideas together.

I have been playing around with some vintage-y ideas for a while but I can't seem to strike the right balance, this seems a little bright and the distress stickles didn't go quite how I wanted but when I catch a glance at it on my desk it looks so pretty and girly that I can't resist it! IRL the love card sits behind the flower petals.

This one below isn't floating my boat, sure it would be lovely to blog about the things you are most proud of, but hey, i'll take the rough with the smooth!

I started off cruising around some blogs looking at stamping techniques so thought I would have a go at stamping and watercolouring. I am resisting the temptation of Copics/Promarkers and I know I couldn't just start off with one of two, I'd want the whole set! I stamped the butterfly with staz-on, so far so good, pencilled with the watercolours and blended them together and I thought it looked ok, then I smothered the whole thing in perfect pearls which looks very spangly but doesn't really show in the picture.

Regardless of the fact that I just spent £30.00 on some new Hero Arts greeting stamps I couldn't find the right sentiment for the card so I used a K&Co sticker, but it had yellow/green on it and there was none on the card so I added the Doodlebug frill. I don't know what it is about me but I like things to tie together, I definitely need to try something outside of my comfort zone!

It's definitely on the 'meh' list so I think i'll just save it for when I need to dash off a quick card! More cards to post this week :)