April Showers Card

We are a little more than half way through April. It’s still raining, but that’s fine because all the rain will help the flowers bloom. We have taken inspiration from the rain and the flowers to create an April showers card. We made this card once before as a wedding shower invite and with different colours, but we thought that it might a fun “Just Because” card to make and give someone to help usher in Spring.

We decided on a blue theme with a pop of bright colour. Do the card whatever colour you choose though; if you have someone in mind to give it to or are making it as a wedding shower invite, pick colours that suit the person or the theme. Our original invite card was teal, white, and red. It looked like this...

For this new card we picked a darker blue, almost primary, and then picked a very pale almost white shade of blue as our layer on top. Make the card whatever size you like. We picked a smaller size than our usual sized card. This one measures 4 ¼ x 6 inches. The light blue layer on top measures 5 ¾ x 4 inches.

For the heart "rain drops," we picked a grayish blue and punched them with our small heart punch.

And for our umbrella, we chose a bright red. Nicole used her machine to cut out the umbrella; it’s roughly 2x2 inches.

There is also a smaller pale blue layer (2 ¼ x 1 ½ inches) which goes on top of a 2 ½ x 1 5/8 inch primary blue layer. On the pale blue layer we have printed the words “Happy Spring” in primary blue ink. You can stamp and emboss words instead if you have a saying or greeting that you like.

Lastly, you’ll need to cut a piece of ribbon to go behind the word layers. We have chosen a thicker blue ribbon.

Ok, so now that you have all of the pieces, you can assemble your card.

First of all, glue your umbrella and “rain drop” hearts down on the pale blue layer. We do this first because we don’t the layer to be glued down on the card and then we mess it up for some reason. Then draw on your "drip" lines coming out of the top of the heart.

Then glue this layer on your card followed by the ribbon. 

Glue the pale blue layer on the smaller dark blue layer and then glue that on top of the ribbon. 

Here is what ours looks like...

Origami Hearts

With less than a month before Valentine’s Day, we are going to start our Valentine themed posts. We’ve got some cute crafts and some yummy recipes to try out for you so we hope you enjoy them!

This week we are going to try something a little different. We are going to make heart shaped origami creations that you can hand out to your friends, family, and sweetie or you can just use them as little decorations.

Nicole is the origami pro so she is going to do all of the folding.

You will need a square piece of origami paper or thinner paper. Cardstock is a bit too thick so you probably don't want to use it for this type of project. We’ve picked a piece of origami paper that you can buy in a pack from the craft store; it is a 5 7/8 inch square but it doesn’t matter what size you use as long as it’s square. Use a smaller piece if you want to make a smaller heart or larger to make a larger one.

1. Take your piece of origami paper and fold in half and unfold, so you have a centre line.

2. Fold the top two corners down to the centre line. Flip over.
     Your paper now looks like a triangle on top of a rectangle.

3. Fold the bottom of the paper, up to meet the bottom of the triangle portion. Flip over.

4. Fold both sides in to the centre line. Unfold.

5. This part is a bit tricky to explain. Fold the two sides in again, however, the triangle portion on the top needs to be folded 'inside-out'. Do this by opening the top corner and folding in the bottom portion first, then folding the top in. Some of the folds on the top will be opposite from the original fold, but on the same line.

6. Flip over. Fold the top point down to meet the bottom edge. Flip over again.

7. Open the flaps at the top, and flatten the sides in.

8. Fold the inner corners down to make to points at the top. Fold the points down a bit to create flat tops.

9. Flip over.

10. Lift up the bottom of the heart to find a little pocket.

Now you have a cute origami heart! You can leave it as it, or write a little message and put it inside the little pocket  to give to someone special, or you can even use it as a little Valentine card and write a “to and from” note on the front.

Crafting with the Colour of the Year

We are still in the Ultraviolet mood so we came up with a

fun quick and easy craft to keep it with you all year long. I had so much fun coming up with little bookmarks for the craft fair that I thought I’d come up with one that utilizes shades of purple. I made sure to get in the Ultraviolet shade which is the base of the bookmark that has a nice blue undertone to it.

This is a super easy craft to do especially if you have scrap pieces of cardstock and pre-punched and stamped shapes.

I took a piece of dark purple cardstock. Make it whatever length and width that you wish. Mine was shorter and not too wide.

Then I glue taped a strip of a lighter shade of purple and then an even lighter greyish pastel purple strip over that.

I punched out two purplish greyish blue one inch circles and then one about two inches for the center. I then glued them on evenly.

Lastly, I had a dark blue stamped and embossed flower which I glued on the middle circle. I thought blue would look nice amongst all of the purples plus it really brings out the blue tone from the darkest purple.

We also thought that we’d look through to find our purplest cards that we have made and share those with you in honour of Ultraviolet. Enjoy.