In my craft room today...

Today I enjoyed a few pleasurable hours spent in my craft room working with beautiful papers, pearls, distress inks, buttons and ribbons...

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Card making is still my first love, and I always take great delight in planning the design and creating a unique card to bless some dear person, with various bits and pieces from my collection...

Living in a place where I don't have access to as many craft shops with a large selection of supplies as I would like, has its disadvantages, but it also helps me to use what I have creatively and carefully in order to still be left with a lovely finished product...

When I last went to the lovely scrapbook shop - one of my favourite places in the world - I fell in love with a gorgeous vintage baby paper pack.  Of course I just had to purchase it, and these are a few of the cards I came up with during my crafty morning...

For this card, I decided to tear a small piece of light pink cardstock to mount the vintage roses on...  I then distressed the edges to give it even more of a vintage appeal...

The ribbon is perhaps not quite vintage, but it certainly does add a charming aspect to the overall design...

I carefully handcut a piece of patterned paper into a pretty shape and printed the sentiment 'Precious Angel...' onto it.

The buttons and pearls complete the card, as well as a piece of dusty pink Baker's twine, which I formed into a bow and adhered to the sentiment...

I used a very simple design for this baby boy card...  These papers I actually bought many years ago in Cape Town and just never used them...  

I accented the card with a piece of lovely blue ribbon as well as three buttons in different shades of blue.  I also added the simple sentiment 'Welcome Baby!'...

I then cut a little sheep from the same paper as the background and used pop-ups to give it a little dimension.

The baby blue ribbon bow was added at the end to complete the card.

This sweet baby girl card is probably my favourite of the three - I love the straight edges which to me add a simplistic grace to the overall appearrance...

I used distress ink called Malted Mauve from VersaMagic to ink the edges of all the paper, which softened the hard edges beautifully and again, brought more of a vintage charm to the card...

I used the same butterfly ribbon as with the first card and also added two lengths of Baker's twine to the centre...

I added different buttons in each corner and a teeny wooden clothes peg with the sentiment 'BABY' to the Baker's twine - this represents all the washing that goes along with the joys of having a sweet little one!

And once I had finished creating baby cards, I decided to make a friendship card in lovely shades of blue with various scraps from my box...

 

   The sentiment, printed onto a beautiful distressed handcut shape, is simply 'Sweet Friend'... 

I used rectangular pieces of patterned papers to give the card a layered look and added white lace to the one side to soften the straight edges... 

Ribbon, buttons and pearls were used to finish off the card and I used plenty of distress in Aegan Blue by VersaMagic to soften the design even more and blend the layers into each other...

For interests sake, each card measures 6.1" x 4".  I use strong brown kraft paper for each of my cards and package them with a brown envelope in clear plastic to protect it.  

I also like to add a small decorative touch to the envelope so that it matches the card...

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Thus ended a very pleasant session of card making...  

I am quite delighted with the outcome and look forward to packaging each sweet card in clear plastic to add to my stall this coming Saturday...

My hope is to sometime begin an Etsy shop to begin selling online, but for now I am enjoying creating and sharing my creative pursuits with you in the hopes of inspiring you to enjoy some lovely crafting time...

And as this is my first post for this month, let me wish all my dear readers a very happy and blessed March!  Thank you kindly for joining me on this creative journey - it truly warms my heart to hear from each of you!

Until next time, sweet friends!

Crafty greetings,

Kelly-Anne