Thortful - A New Place to Buy My Greeting Cards!

I'm always on the look out for new opportunities to sell my artwork and I recently came across Thortful - a UK based company which produces high quality greeting cards designed by their community of designers, illustrators and  photographers.  You can now find a small selection of my designs on Thortful and I will be adding more soon!
All cards from Thortful are printed in the UK on premium quality A5 paper and sent 1st class - if you order by 2pm they are posted the same day!  You can also personalise cards with a message, which is printed inside the card.
If you are super organised you can even start buying your Christmas cards now - I've added these 4 Christmas card designs so far...
Get 50% off your first card with this code: MMXQFF9S

This week Thortful are also offering a 20% discount off every card - so it's a great time to try out one of my designs (or anyone elses!).  Just use code AUGUST20 at checkout.  The offer ends Friday 26th August.

Handmade Birthday Cards

Spring is a busy time for birthdays and other card giving occasions in my house, so I thought I would share a couple of cards I made recently.

This fishy card was for my Dad’s birthday.  I used some backing paper from my set of Fish scrapbooking papers and fish from my collage sheet printed onto card.  The vallis leaves were cut from coloured paper and I made the design more 3D by sticking the fish on with foam pads.  Finally, for a bit of sparkle I used some translucent sequins…

I’ve made a few variations of this butterfly card recently (this one was for my sister’s birthday)…

I love the pearlescent pea green card blank I used for this design, unfortunately it’s a discontinued colour so I won’t be able to get any more :(  I printed one of my butterfly patterned papers onto sandstone coloured card and the butterflies and message were printed on card from my butterfly collage sheet.  After cutting the patterned background to size I coloured the edge with a gold inkpad.  The large butterfly was attached with foam pads and the small butterfly glued to the card along its body, with the wings slightly folded up for a 3D effect.  I also used some pretty yellow and blue gems to finish the card.

Have you bought any of the printables from my shop to use in your cardmaking or craft projects?  If you have I would love to see what you make with them!  Leave a link to your photos in the comments below :)

Lots of Budgies!

If you follow me on facebook you will already know that my latest designs include lots of budgies!

I experimented with sketching in pencil, pen and colouring digitally before deciding on how to draw the finished row of budgies above (which is in pen and coloured digitally).  There are so many different colour combinations to choose from – the blue one in the middle is a bit like my budgie Charlie.

I’m using the finished illustration to make a range of products from patterned papers to greeting cards, like the ones below…

The birthday card is printed on white popset card which has a very slightly rough surface - I can print this design with other messages too.  The square card is printed on lovely linen textured card.  These cards and other greeting cards are available to buy from my Folksy shop and Etsy shop.

I’ll be sharing more photos of the other budgie themed items I am designing soon!

Sneak peek at the start of a new range of cards

I'm currently working on a new range of greeting cards.  It's something that I've been planning for a while and now I have a new supply of card stock they are actually starting to come to life!  Here is one of my new designs...

Before my card designs have been printed by Moo and although I love the quality of their cards I have decided to start printing cards myself.  There are a few reasons for this change; it means that I can print on different sized card, different types of card (the card photographed is on lovely linen textured card) and I will be able to print customised cards.

The first sets of cards will be ready very soon - so keep an eye out for those appearing on the blog and my shops!



New Moo Greeting Cards and Postcards

Most of last week seems to have disappeared into a blur of craft fayre activity!  I spent the week preparing for the Creations Spring Craft Fayre... making things for my stalls, putting up posters and all the other last minute things which needed doing.  The fayre went well, everyone's stalls looked great! There are photos of the event on the fayre's blog: www.creationsfayre.blogspot.com
So this week I'm catching up on things which were put off until after the craft fayre.  I have new makes to share and new products with my illustrations, like these cards and postcards printed by Moo...

I love getting parcels from Moo in the post - their packaging always makes me smile! :)
These postcards are a new product line, they feature a mix of Hexley and animal illustrations and should be appearing in my Etsy shop soon...

I have some new greeting cards too with Hexley and animal illustrations as well as some new card designs like the cupcake cards...

New Cards

I've been neglecting my blog a bit recently so I thought that it was time I tried to catch up... here are some new cards I've had printed:

I always get a bit nervous sending work away to be printed because I'm never quite sure exactly how they will turn out but I was really pleased with these Hexley cards...

Handmade cards with papers, ribbons etc are great fun to make but they always take me so long to do, so I've been working on some new ideas for cards which are printed but could have hand finished elements too. The 'Wedding', 'Christmas' and 'Birthday' cards below were made by hand cutting letters from coloured card which I then decorated with pen and paint. The rest of the design was drawn in pen and painted in watercolours and finally I scanned the whole design and added a background digitally.

The ladybird card is a little different with the printed part of the card originally made from a combination of collage and watercolours. I've then added a ribbon, punched paper flower and brad to the finished card.

Moo Greeting Cards!

I had a very exciting package in the post today - my Moo order arrived (well the greeting card part anyway)!
I had some technical problems placing the order, but the customer support at Moo was excellent and at last I have received my cards (the stickers will hopefully be on their way soon).

About half the cards feature my animal ACEOs and the other half is mostly Hexley illustrations along with some dragons and elephants.
If you like these cards you will be able to buy them from my online shop very soon (I'll blog to let you know when they are ready!)