Merry Christmas ... in June :)

My first Christmas card for 2008 is ready! Am I quick or what? :-D

I really like this little Xmas tree stamp so I put three of them on the card. The white one is embossed with Snowflake powder and looks very nice for real, with tiny silver flakes in it. I made another tree in gold (no Christmas without a bit of gold in it, don't you think?) and the third one in red. Silly me :(, I forgot to use a clear ink for this one and stamped it in green too, which made the glittery red powder not show at it should. I'll pay more attention next time, I promise.

The rest is peel offs and a ready-made greeting. Even if it's a clumsy beginner's card, I think it can be used when Christmas comes.
I wish it would come sooner, we are having very hot weather over here and I hate it.

Have a mighty fine weekend everybody!

Another first....

Finally, the moment we've all been waiting for

I made my FIRST card using stamps and heat embossing. After throwing away a significant amount of *tests* I managed to have these 3 flowers that could be used, even if they are far from being truly OK. :)

I have stolen the card layout (most of it anyway) from Do Crafts "Creativity" magazine. So I stamped 3 daffodils on white card, one on a (sort of) yellow card and another two on orange and sienna. The scan doesn't show the colours very well, they are a bit livelier.
I sprinkled gold embossing power everywhere :) and heat embossed all the stamped images. I then cut three flowers and three centres. I used a light green ribbon on the left and added the three decorative tokens (they're handmade paper manufactured in India - love them!). I then glued the three daffodils directly on card and layered the centres with foam pads.
My cards can have English or Romanian wording on them depending on which of my friends get it, so I didn't add any sentiment yet but there's room for it in the lower right corner.

Now all I have to do is exercise more (and more and more) and get to master stamping and heat embossing. They are great fun to do and give a card a special look with that shinny contours.
I'm off to stamp a Christmas card now, the first Christmas card for this year - I'm hooked on firsts it seems...

Thanks for looking!

About tiles and folds and where to find them :)

Since my first ever card, the one I posted last time, I've played with TBF [Tea Bag Folding] a lot and made many other cards. Some of them I'm really pleased with, most of them I'm not :) but I am happy I was able to produce them with my own two hands.
Here are a few of the TBF cards I've made...
You might notice that apart from different colours and layouts, the folding of each medallion is different too. A lot of very talented and imaginative people came up with various ways in which to fold lil' squares of paper and assemble them together.
When you're at the first encounter with teabag folding the easiest is to start with the basic folds - the Kite Fold, the Half Kite Fold, the Basic Triangle Fold.
**In TBF most medallions need 8 tiles**

You will, of course :), need some tiles too. If you make your own it's great fun. I use the "Kaleidoscope" Effect in Paint Shop Pro and play with any image to come up with many tiles. Or I design the pattern myself. Any image editor software can be used and there are also some specialized programs for kaleidoscope-ing ;).

If you don't know how, don't have the time or don't want to make your own tiles, you can download millions of them from the Internet, where nice people offer them for free (including me - lol).
My tiles are HERE - pick a category from the lefthand menu, I tried to sort them by colour.

Five tiles for you to play with right now.
**A teabag tile usually has 1.5" (4 cm), so the image must be resized when printing it. And remember, you need 8 tiles for a medallion. **






Next time I'll give you a list of links to more FREE teabag tiles and folding instructions.

Have fun!

The FIRST card I've ever made

My first experiment as a crafter was Teabag folding. It is an Origami technique much easier to accomplish, in my opinion. Of course, maybe it's not as spectacular as some real Origami but it looks very very good on greeting cards. Teabag folding originated in Holland and consists of folding small squares of patterned paper and then joining them together to form a flower-like medallion. Credit for its origin is given to Tiny van der Plaas. Sitting at her table, worrying about a birthday card for her sister that she had forgotten to pick up, Tiny van der Plaas began folding her fruit tea bag envelope thus inventing Teabag folding.

I first read about it on Circle of Crafters website and started exercising with the simplest and easiest fold - the Kite fold.

So after folding 8 squares of printed paper and forming the medallion I worked on the rest of my card. I took an A4 sheet of cardstock and folded in two. In the lower right corner I glued half of the tile (the small printed paper square) and in the lower left corner I added first a triangle of a darker shade than the basic card and over it I glued another smaller triangle of lilac card. It looked a bit too 'nude' ;) so I used some nail stickers to line the margin of the lilac triangle. Isn't that awesome? You can use anything to make a card.
Finally, I attached the medallion to the the card and cut out a round shape from a metallic bubble envelope to use in the middle of the medallion. My first card was ready!


Not too bad, eh? :-D

A new hobby

Hello from Romania!
This is my first ever blog and I am still learning how to work with it, so please be gentle if you come here and see any "weird" things on the screen. I am probably playing with the settings.

In August last year (2007) I've been 'dragged' [*wink wink*] into card making by a very good friend I've met on the Internet. She's a very talented crafter, my hero and my benefactor. She's been helping me with lots of crafting supplies and lured me into this fantastically relaxing hobby which is card making. Thank you Lady (you know who you are), I am forever in your debt.

I thought I'd start this blog to show other people, who might be interested, that crafting your own cards isn't the 'rocket-science' I always thought it was. Lacking any artistic talent I would have never thought it possible for me to actually CREATE anything. But I managed to do it and it's just great! :)

I will share in here the cards I've made and the ones I will make, I will talk about various techniques (none invented by me, unfortunately) and also a few graphic elements used for making cards, elements I made myself. You'll see what's all about in my future posts.