Little Claire Saturday Project

Today is the launch of the Little Claire April stamp challenge and the theme for this month is "craft card". The prize for the winner of the challenge is a £20.00 voucher for the Little Claire website and believe me £20.00 can get you  a lot of crafty goodies so have a go.
This is the card that I have made as inspiration for the project. The eagle eyed among you might have seen a version of this card already because I have posted it on my blog before but I didn't  managed to write down the recipe for it. It is only a small card but it is really easy to make and I have made lots of versions of it in lots of colours, its just fun to do and I love the sound of a punch punching (is that the same for everyone or just me being
weird).

what you will need:
Little Claire digi Cat on a Branch stamp
Martha Stuart punch around the page combo
base card lager than 4 1/4" x 4 1/4"
craft card
cream card
good quality fine linen card  to print onto
Tim Holtz distress Ink - Vintage Photo
Cut n Dry
Tattered Lace Essentials die No 9, or any 3" circle die
die cutting machine
Colouring implements of your choice
narrow cream lace
small heart of pearls
3 flower embellishments
Glamour Dust glitter
pearls on a wire - optional

Using the craft card and the Martha Stuart Punch around the Page punches make a square where the inner part is no smaller than 3" x 3". You may need to test this out on a piece of scrap paper first. I don't know what my punch set is called but it looks like this.

If you need to make a repeat pattern with your border punch that is shorter than the stencil on the punch flaps and you can not line the pattern in your punched card with the stencil, turn the punch over and line up the punched part of your card with the punch cutting parts. Remember to always punch the card from the same direction i.e. do not turn the card over to punch it. You can use this method of lining up for the corner punch too.

When you have a punched square of craft card tint the edges with Tim Holtz Vintage Photo distress ink and a piece of Cut n Dry
Stick the craft card onto a piece of cream card.
Trim around the cream card to a desired size.
Stick the Cream card onto the base card at the fold  and trim down the base card to the same size as the cream card.

In your graphics program open up the image digi Cat on a Branch and re size it to 2 1/4" from the cats tail to the cats paw.
Cut and paste the image and crop this second image down until just the leaves remain.
Write the words Good Luck and My Friend and make them no more than 1" long (I use Serif Craft Artist as my graphic program and the font I used was a pre installed one in the sentiments section of the program and it is found in the "Thank You" section and then I just changed the words).
Arrange the images and the words on your screen ready for printing but leave enough space around the cat image to cut a 3" circle and enough space between the sentiments to cut them out too.
Print the image onto fine cream linen paper.

Trim the cat image down and place the Tattered Lace Essentials Circles die No9 (or any 3" circle die) around the image, make sure that the three outer leaves are overhanging the image.
Run the image through the die cutting machine.
Colour the image with your choice of colours and don't forget to colour the extra printed leaves.
Stick the coloured image onto the centre of the craft card.
Cut the extra leaves out and shape them and stick them onto the image so that they spill over the side of the circle.
Tie a bow in the lace and stick the bow onto bottom left of the circle topper.
Stick a small heart of pearls over the centre knot of the bow.

Cut down the sentiment words "Good luck" to 7/16" x 1 3/4" and the words "my friend" to 7/16" x 2" and shade around the edges with the Tim Holts Vintage Photo.
Stick the sentiments onto the card in the desired position.

Using the Glamour Dust glitter, glitter the flower embellishments and when dry stick onto the card.
I used some little pearls on a wire which I cut down from a longer wire (part of a wedding sprig from Hobbycraft) to accent the flowers.

I am sorry I don't know the name of the Martha Stuart punch that I used but I think any of the lacy type Martha Stuart Punch around the Page punches would look great for this project. If you have any idea what my punch is called please leave me a comment and let me know because I use it such a lot and I`m curious now.