Is it Mother’s Day?

Butterfly Explosion

Having a geographically distant family has a number of distinct problems, one being the non-universal treatment of special days…  Why is Mother’s Day in the UK on the 30th March and in Australia on the 11th May?  Actually Wikipedia has an excellent explanation, and a handy guide to help, but that’s not what today’s post is about!  Anyway, have you ever tried to buy a Mother’s Day card in Brisbane out of season?  If you have then I don’t have to explain, if you haven’t, well go try!

The good news is living with a Stampin’ Up! addict means that the I have near to hand all that’s required to create the most deserving mum a hand-made masterpiece…

If you read my last blog post, you’ll know that I’m fully in touch with my feminine side and a great fan of those butterfly punches, Atty will no doubt add the correct names in a footnote to this post later!

So I start trawling Google images to find something I can copy, I understood this as piracy but apparently the Stampin’ Up! community call it CASE, which stands for something cute.  With a card in mind, Atty lines up the equipment needed and the ‘Man Stampin‘ begins. So the base of the card is Whisper White, I know that much. I then add what I shall describe as a short stripe to the right hand edge using a bit of left over DSP (I think).  Immediately I realise I’ve stuck it too high, but there’s nothing I can do now so I continue.  Taking the fancy edge punch thingy, next I punch out the pretty border on the right hand side. Now for the stamping, first problem Atty doesn’t have a Happy Mother’s Day stamp, is she serious, it seems so.  There is a solution, I’m given a high speed lesson in stamp masking and I’m ready to go.  Ok, as you can see from the picture, it wasn’t entirely successful, my Mother’s is not only crooked but half of it was stamped on a piece of paper I was using to align the stamp.  Atty tells me of the power of Stamp-a-ma-jig and how this helps, but this is way beyond my attention span, so I’ll be settling for the rustic look!

Now for the butterflies, punch one through the front cover and the others from the Big Shot using the embosslit things, some dabs of glue, making sure to align the one on the left over my ink smudge and all’s good. A quick stamp of the butterflies antennae and yes it’s positioned perfectly and it’s all done for the front.

I finished up the card with a little DSP behind the butterfly cut out, stuck on with foam pads that I now know are called Dimensionals, and some little shiny things for the body.

Job done.

It’s in the envelope and ready to go.  The good news is that Mums love anything home-made, the bad news is Australia post still sends mail to the UK via a Tea Clipper, so it will arrive at some time in the next three months, maybe just in time for Australian Mother’s Day.

 Atty says:

To get the DSP nicely lined up with the scallop trim, Peter actually punched the border on the Whisper White first and then stuck the DSP on top once lined up in position over the scallops. He then punched that part of the border again.

The happy birthday stamp was masked with tape whilst inking (i.e. to cover up the birthday to produce happy by itself). The tape was then removed for stamping.

Peter has used the Elegant Butterfly punch, Beautiful Wings Embosslits and the Scallop Trim Border punch. The colours used are gumball green, pretty in pink (now retired) and soft suede. The butterfly antennae are from the Papillon Potpourri stamp set and the happy birthday stamp is from the Express Yourself hostess set. “Mother’s” was created from a little individual letter set I had lying around. The “little shiny things” are of course Rhinestone Basic Jewels.

The CASE philosophy is Copy and Share Everything and is a great way to get ideas for cards. This one I found on Pinterest by Kim.