A card a layout and a mini

Yes I know my blog's been sadly neglected lately. I'm going through a bit of a rough time with my health recently, and haven't really had the energy. I have some kind of unidentified lung condition which has me coughing all over the place and leaves me gasping for air so badly that I need oxygen to help me breathe. I won't bore you with the details, but I do hope the good docs find out what my problem is soon.

In the meantime I've managed a LO and a birthday card for DGD 1 who's turning 4 tomorrow. I can hardly believe I am a grandmother of a 4 year old. I've also started a mini featuring the party our family held over the Jubilee weekend.

Firstly here is my LO. The picture is of Sarah with her really good friend. The layout really came about because I was experimenting with a flower idea I thought of. I made the flower and it turned out so beautiful that I thought it was too good to waste and turned the whole thing into this LO
.

 Each layer of the flower is made by cutting out 5 hearts and snipping the bottom point into a  shape. I then glued the V together and glued each heart to the other with strong glue. I overlapped each heart slightly and the hearts needed a bit of manipulation to get the shape I wanted. I used two different sized hearts for the layers. I drew them freehand but you could use a punch or die if you prefer. I then used puffy paint on the edges and when I had puffed up the paint and it was dry I added some stickles to the edges and the body of the flower. I glued the two layers and finished it with a Prima flower centre. I hope you understand these instructions in case you want to give it a try

 I used the Martha Stewart lacy hearts border punch for my strips of PP and then used ribbon to lace through the holes. I also kept the tiny hearts that came away from the punch and glued them randomly over the LO

 A close up of the little heart fall outs. I also used puffy paint and stickles on the edges of my photo matte.

 

 

Next up is the card I made for my granddaughter.

 

 First I took a 5 x 10 inch piece of CS and folded it in half. I covered the outside and the inside lower half with PP

 Afterwards I chose this delicious little decoupage image as decoration. I stuck the whole image to a 4 1/2 by 51/2 piece of pp covered cs. I folded the top layer of the card in half and stuck the embellishment to the bottom half.

 

Some handmade spiral roses hold the mountain folded part of the card in place if you see what I'm getting at.

Lastly, I've been working on a mini album of our Jubilee party. The actual book is finished, but I have yet to fill it with pictures and decorations. Hopefull I'll get it done over the weekend, but in the meantime here is what I've done so far.

 This is the front cover. The album was inspired by one made by the amazingly talented Laura Denison. Check out all her really cool stuff on thepapertrail.blogspot.com. You will betruly flabbergasted by the stuff that Laura can do. I used the Portobello Road collection by Papermania. This collection is fantastic. It has everything you'll ever need for anything British, and no I don't work for them. The crown is cut from a sizzix die and I'm still going to add the number 60 from Tim Holtz numerals on the bottom corner .

 This is an approximate view of the inside. Each page has several pockets and tags for photos, journalling or ephemera.

 This is a close up view of one side of each page

And here is one from the other side. Hopefully soon I'll be able to show you the finished product. In the meantime thanks for stopping by and I always appreciate any comments.