Docrafts Wellington Bear - A Father's Day card

Hi blogging friends

It was Father's Day last Sunday and here is a card I made for my husband who is a great Dad to our daughter:

Whilst I have been staying at hospital helping to care for my loved one, I have taken along some diecut paper tole images and put a few of them together.  It is so much easier and quicker if they are diecut as I don't have to do all the time-consuming bit of cutting them out which is great because I have very little crafting time at the moment!  My Aussie blogging friend Merry from MerryMade Cards and Crafts does lots of gorgeous paper tole cards and has been a great supporter of my blog right from Day 1 (thanks Merry!) and Merry's cards are what inspired me to get back into some papertole which I haven't done for a couple of years now.

The image is by Docrafts and is called Wellington Bear and I thought he was just perfect for a masculine card.  I layered him up using dimensionals.

The designer paper has been in my stash for ages and is by Basic Grey - Granola; I was really pleased how well it matched the image and it was one of those cards where everything came together easily - I love that!  The navy blue button is also by Basic Grey from their Granola set.  I sewed the button holes with some string.

When I was at Riot Art and Craft a few weeks ago, I found some really cool new rolls of various colours of textured ribbon made by Birch and I have used one of them on my card.  This one has the rather odd name of Pizza Box - My Best Friend.  I added some Fray Stop to the ends as it does tend to fray alot after cutting.  I thought I would do something a bit different with my ribbon as you can see inspired by what I have seen around blogland. 

I used my favourite border punch for masculine cards - Fiskars Threading Water punch - for the bottom panel then added a line above it using my Scor-Pal so I had an edge to butt my designer paper up against (it's easier for me to get it straight that way).  Not sure if you can see, but I ran the navy blue cardstock through my Cuttlebug using my Crafts Too dots embossing folder.  You can always click on the photo for a bigger look.

I thought about adding a sentiment but couldn't really figure out where or what shape - and in the end, decided to leave it off.  I guess I figured that having the writing on the book that Wellington Bear is holding really said it all.

Here is a close-up so you can see the layering:

Challenges:

I am entering my card into the following challenges -

Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Anything goes - 29th August

*************************

Before I go, I thought I would share some photos of my garden now that Spring has sprung here in Australia!  I am so happy to see new bright green leaves on my Chinese Elm - they look so pretty against the blue sky.  How I have LONGED to see some blue sky; it's been a very long and very wet Winter!! 

My white violets have been delighting me with their fragrance and I love how beautiful their whiteness contrasts against their dark green leaves:  

My Spring bulbs have been bursting into life.  Here are some grape hyacinths that bring me so much joy each year with their beautiful purple colour (purple is my favourite colour!):  

My daphne has been resplendent this year and now almost finished flowering.  Their delightful fragrance fills the air as walk along our decking:

{happy sigh}......Spring makes me feel so happy!

Thanks so much for stopping by and thanks Merry for the inspiration behind my card!

Jocelyn

Card Recipe:

Stamps:  None

Ink:  None

Designer paper:  Basic Grey - Granola - Trail Mix

Accessories:  Scor-Pal, Docrafts Wellington Bear diecut sheet, button by Basic Grey - Granola, dimensionals, string, Cuttlebug, Crafts Too dots embossing folder, ribbon by Birch - Pizza Box - My Best friend, fray stop, cardstock - navy blue, American Crafts Kraft

Punches:  Fiskars Threading Water

Sorry for my lack of posting + some photos of my garden

Hello blogging friends,

Sorry for my lack of posting - sometimes life gets in the way of blogging and I have been very busy with helping my elderly Mum and of course, life is always busy with a young child - plus I have been plagued with migraines of late which hasn't been fun. Anyway, you didn't come here to hear me moan so I shall stop now ;-) On to more important issues......

The other reason is that I couldn't do any posts!! Every time I tried to do a new post in Blogger, I would just get this non-stop spinning wheel where you would usually type your text. I thought maybe Blogger was having some maintenance done making it go "off-line", however, after some research I have found that the new editor program on Blogger isn't working for my Blog (other Bloggers are having the same issue apparently) so I have had to modify my settings to go to the 'Old Editor". I have never used the Old Editor before so are still finding my way around it. I can't seem to make pictures very big - but it is certainly better than nothing!

I am glad that it is not me - I was thinking that I had messed up my Template modifications and was tearing my hair out thinking that I wouldn't be able to fix it.

Anyway, I hope to resume my regular posting very soon. I am working on some of those hard-to-make masculine cards and finishing off my ribbon dyeing tutorial.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a couple of photos that I took in the past week:

These daisies appeared in my garden bed after digging in some home-made compost. They are so pretty and just keep flowering. I love daisies - they are so cheerful! They are actually really small flowers - probably about half an inch in diameter.

This second photo is the view from my kitchen window. The sun had almost set and this double-rainbow appeared through the misty rain. The colour was so intense in the centre of the first rainbow that I just had to take a photo. It hasn't been enhanced with any photographic editor - this is just how it was.

This last photo is of my pink bottlebrush which has been looking spectacular and keeping the bees very busy - so it wasn't hard to find a flower that had a bee on it for my photo :-)

Since I took these photos, the weather has turned very cold - like mid-Winter - and it was very frosty here this morning - below 0 degrees C (or 32 deg F). Brrrr - I felt like a blimp wearing all my layers of clothes when I took my DD to school. I am wishing for spring already.....

Thanks for visiting - and I hope to resume my regular posts very soon!

Jocelyn

A photograph for you and a sneaky-peak of what I've been doing!

Hello and thanks for stopping by :-)

I haven't made any cards over the past few days as I have been very busy learning how to use watercolour pencils which I have never used before.  Sometimes we need to take time out to learn something new - keeps our mojo going.   We had a planned power outage here at home on Wednesday (some maintenance on the electricity lines) = no computer and too dark in my Craft room to do any cardmaking, so I sat outside on our decking enjoying the beautiful autumn weather and played with my watercolour pencils which I enjoyed immensely.  Hopefully this week I should be able to turn the images into some cards!  Here is a sneaky peak of 2 of the images (hope you noticed they are Penny Black stamps - what else LOL!):-

So, today I thought would show you a photo of a flower in my garden instead.  The pink hydrangea below has special meaning to me because about 18 months ago, my sister-in-law gave me a bunch of hydrangeas from her garden for my birthday.  After having enjoyed them in the vase for a few weeks, I popped them into a pot to see if I could strike some cuttings.  And they did!  So now I have this beautiful pot of flowers!  Isn't the colour beautiful?!!  I have not enhanced the image with photographic software - this is exactly how it looked surrounded by the gorgeous bright green leaves.

Thanks again for popping in.

Jocelyn