L for Love

Good evening, everyone.

Just taking the opportunity while DH takes over the nursing of a somewhat needy post-op Bonnie for a wee while to do this post. I really enjoyed making this card because this is my first attempt at using fabric and stitching.

The fabric has everything you need for a Christmas card, a red, gold, white and black colour scheme and snowmen, holly, lanterns and robins - perfect! I stitched it to red card cut out with the one of the new baby nesties from B-C-E and then adhered it to black backing paper. I chose the Nellie Sugar stamp, Snow Loved, thinking it an ideal match with the fabric and stuck to the colour scheme.

I stamped onto a white card, coloured with Promarkers and blinged it up with glitter. I then inked up the edges in red and then embossed with gold powder. This last was actually pretty tricky to do - I first went round the edges with a Versamark pen then embossed with the powder but wasn't too pleased with the result - too bitty. So, I took a glue pen and went over the top of the gold embossing which I then covered in powder again and I was much happier with the result. However, what I did discover is that the glue heated up much quicker and even bubbled in one corner. It's too easy to overcook it so another lesson learned :(

Now, I always try to decorate inside and back of my cards but the fabric presented a bit of a problem. I didn't really want to stitch it onto the inside and back so what to do? The solution was to scan the fabric, print off a page, then import it into My Craft Studio Professional and subject it to a bit of digi punching to design my own sentiments. Here's the results:

Inside

Back

Sentiment on front.

The finishing touches were some gorgeous red ribbon printed with Christmas trees, and a charm from my stash and, finally, some red flat-backed Prima pearls,  bought mail order from the lovely Hayley at Funky Farm Scrapbook Barn.

I really enjoyed making this card, feel I've learned a lot, and, happily, I am pleased with the end result. And, better still, I've plenty of fabric left - they call it a 'fat quarter' in the business, it measures approximately 40cm x 42cm, enough for several cards.

To all her well-wishers here's a pic of our Bonnie.

She is much brighter today, eating and drinking again and going quietly round the bend trying to remove that collar! She is banging into everything. Poor wee thing - it's only when you see her struggling to get around with this lump of plastic around her neck that you realise how much she depends on her whiskers to feel her way.

That's it for now - I'm off to take a look round all the other WOYWWers desks for a while then it will be on to the M card in the series. Goodness knows what I'll have to talk about when this is over :)

Bye for now

Elizabeth