Eid Mubarak cards and dinner

On Tuesday evening my husband and I were kindly invited to join our next door neighbours and their family for a dinner to celebrate Eid. So I decided that it would be nice to make them some cards to take with us, although I've never actually made an Eid card before. Altenew and Hero Arts came to the rescue as I found the perfect stamps and dies in my stash and set to work.

For my first card, for our hosts, I chose a large square ivory pearlised card blank. I started with the gorgeous Floral Tile Bold Prints 6" square stamp by Hero Arts and stamped it onto thick white card with Versamark ink before heat embossing with detail gold embossing powder. I then painted it with Zig Real Brush watercolour markers, which took ages but was very therapeutic!

The finished panel was then layered onto shiny gold card, then onto the card blank. I used Versamark ink and WOW metallic gold rich super fine embossing powder to stamp the Eid Mubarak sentiment from Altenew's Eid Al Adha stamp set onto a strip of purple card and added it with foam tape. I used the large Eid Mubarak die from Altenew for the focal point, cutting three from white card and one from shiny gold card and gluing them together for dimension. I must say that I am quite pleased with the finished result!

I needed three more cards for the other guests, that weren't going to be so time consuming to make, so I turned to the lovely Eastern Influences craft papers from Craft Consortium. I trimmed a sheet down to fit onto 6" square white card blanks, leaving a narrow white border showing. The lanterns and buildings from the Altenew Eid Al Adha stamp set were stamped directly onto the patterned paper using VersaFine Clair Nocturne ink, which gave a really good impression. I used my MISTI to position the stamps so that I could stamp them repeatedly in exactly the right place. How did we manage before the MISTI was invented?! 

The Eid Mubarak sentiment was heat embossed in gold onto red card, which was cut out using one of the My Favourite Things Stitched Sentiment Strip dies. Again I used foam tape to mount this to the cards for dimension. 

Nasima our hostess is an excellent cook, but I didn't take any photos of the main course at dinner as all the other guests were hungry, having just finished fasting for the month of Ramadan. There were lots of happy faces afterwards, especially when one of the guests produced an enormous cake, decorated with fresh fruits and chocolate. 

Here is Farhan, cutting the cake into generous slices. It was really delicious! We were made to feel very welcome and were honoured to have been invited to share in the family celebration.  A huge thank you to our hosts Hemayet and Nasima - we had a lovely time.

Although I had never made an Eid card before, they were all well received. It just goes to show that you shouldn't be afraid to try new things and make new friends!

Altenew Washi Sympathy Cards

Recently we lost my Auntie Pat to Cancer so I found myself in need of several sympathy cards. These are never easy to make when you need them, so I decided to design three cards and make a few multiples of them so that I'd have some spare cards to hand when I require them in future.

Altenew have a range of really beautiful, wide washi tapes and I thought that the stunning Botanical Rhapsody (which is simply printed black on white) would be ideal for making Sympathy cards.

I started by covering three large (A3) sheets of white card with the washi tape, smoothing it down with a bone folder as I stuck it down. Then I cut several card fronts with my paper trimmer - I managed to get four 5" x 7" panels, four 6" square panels and had just enough left for three strips to add to DL cards. I stuck these to the card blanks using double sided tape, before adding various sentiments.

For the four 5' x 7" cards I used Altenew's Thinking of You die to cut several sentiments from black card. I stacked and glued three sentiments together for each card, to add some extra dimension. The "with deepest sympathy" sentiment is from Altenew's Wildflower Garden stamp set and I chose to stamp it with Versamark ink and heat emboss with detail white embossing powder onto black card. I cut the card into flag shapes and used foam tape to mount them onto my card fronts.

The 6" square cards were made in a similar way, but I used black card blanks and trimmed the panels down a little so that a narrow border was showing.

The Sympathy die that I used for these is by Sugar Pea Designs. Again I glued three of the words together before gluing them to my card. Lawn Fawn's fundamentals glue tube is perfect for this as it has a really fine applicator tip and the glue dries clear too. 

The "Thinking of You" sentiment is from Altenew's Beautiful Inside stamp set. I also used one of the longer messages from the set for the inside of each card. 

On the remaining three panels I decided to colour in the washi tape background using my new Faber Castell Polychromos pencils. I don't have many of these yet as I've just started my collection by buying a few individual pencils, but they are so lovely to use that I'm sure I'll be adding some more colours as soon as I'm able to. The coloured panels were then matted onto purple card and then added to black DL card blanks. The "with sympathy" sentiment is one of Altenew's Painted Greetings stamps and again I used white embossing powder on black card. I used My Favourite Things Stitched Fishtail Sentiment Strip dies to cut out the sentiments and added them with foam tape for dimension.

I was really pleased that I'd managed to make eleven cards in total and that I won't be caught short next time I need to send a sympathy card. 

The Altenew washi tape roll is a generous ten metres long (x 175mm) so I have plenty left to make some more cards in future. The lovely botanical design would lend itself well to lots of occasions and I'm looking forward to colouring in some more card panels in brighter colours to make some happier cards next.