We had our first card class at Regal this week.  It was fairly hectic but most people seemed to be smiling!  We only have one spot left for the November card class, and I'm starting to plan ahead for next year.  (Yes already!!!)  The October scrapbooking class is all booked out, but we are taking bookings for the November one.  Plus of course the free demos for October and November are still to come.......

The Kaiser October release is in the shop, along with lots of other new goodies including stamps and embossing folders!  If you haven't been down to see us lately please pop in and say hello, and check out the new stock.

IRIS FOLDED DOLPHINS

This card is a survivor - its been used as a sample card on the counter, served its time on our display board and even survived a couple of months in the window.  Its a little crumpled but I thought Maz's iris-folded dolphins were too nice not to share before they reached their final resting place. The base card with dolphin cut-outs is available from Regal, and a selection of dark and light grey papers with a shiny textured silver for the "iris" were used.  A couple of  silver peel-off stickers complete the card.  (And yes....I promise to include an un-crumpled card from Maz within the next couple of weeks!!)

PARCHMENT BUTTERFLY

Parchment craft is one field of card making into which I rarely stray.  I am totally in awe of this beautiful parchment card made by one of our customers, Lynn Kirkham.  Lynn has very kindly allowed us to photograph a few of her cards for the blog, so keep an eye out for other examples of her work in the weeks ahead.  (And yes, they are all as impressive as this example!!)

3D WITH LACE

                                                                                                    

Trudy Meijer has used real lace to frame this Sparklelight 3D, which she added to a black base card.  (Both are available from Regal).  Two silver border stickers complete the front of this very elegant card.  Trudy has continued the lacy theme inside by adding a white paper panel, edged with a border punch

CUP AND SAUCER CARD

This is the third in the series of newly released shaped cards from Regal.  Tania had decorated it with some pretty scrapbooking papers and a selection of paper flowers.  Now there's a whole tea party happening in the Regal card world - teapots, cupcakes and cups!!

CUPCAKE CARDS

Here are a couple of examples of Regal's new shaped card - the cupcake card....or the Christmas pud' card, if you like.  Maz made the latter using embossed card for the base and Snowtex for the "iced" top.

I made the other one....the top was supposed to look as if it had sprinkles but looks a bit more as if it has measles!!!! If I had my time again I'd make fewer but bigger spots with KindiGlitz.  I cut a second top and fixed it to the card with foam tape for added dimension.

These cards are fun to decorate.  They  are now on the Regal website.

BUTTERFLY CIRCLES

Here is another card from Leith Laws.  She has rounded the corners of one of Regal's plain single fold cards, and then added circles of patterned paper from Kaiser's Lush collection, backed with slightly larger  plain card.  The greeting, which provides the main focus of the card,  is inside a little wooden frame, also from Kaiser. Leith has finished the card with some lovely little punched butterflies with lifted wings.

JAPANESE LADIES ON LATTICE CARDS

Mary Blyth brought lovely cards featuring Japanese ladies (from the Sparklelight 3D range) into the shop and happily for us, she is allowing me to put them on the blog.

Note the innovative way that Mary has used Regal's lattice cards - by unfolding the "doors" she's converted one card into two.  By separating some of the layers in the 3Ds she has also been able to share one picture across the last two cards.  Clever and economical - what a great idea!!

FLOWER BARROW BEST WISHES

 How cute is this card by Kay Beams, another of our lovely customers who have agreed to share some of their cards.  Kay has used one of Regal's square cards as a base, cutting the front panel back slightly with decorative scissors to reveal a strip of patterned paper underneath.  The front panel was then run through a die-cutting machine using a Swiss Dots folder.  She has paper pieced the barrow and added various embellishments.  The pretty little flowers are made by winding embroidery thread!

News from Regal

An update for folks that I haven't seen in the shop lately is that due to popular demand, we are now running monthly classes in addition to the free demos (which will continue).  At this stage we are thinking of doing one card class and one scrapbooking class each month but we may do some fine tuning as time goes on.  The October card class booked out really quickly but there are still a few vacancies for the scrapbooking one.  The latter is being taught by Susan Longman who is a well known member of several design teams as well as featuring regularly in papercraft magazines and promises to be a fabulous opportunity to learn off a very talented scrapbooker.  We've just started taking bookings for the November card class which I'm teaching(!)  I'll be doing a step-by-step construction of waterfall cards - one of those techniques that's quite hard to fathom from a book but really easy once someone shows you how.  Details are available from Regal's craft shop in Launceston.

FAN CARD

I used a Regal fan card to make this example.  If you just popped some pretty paper or fabric underneath it could easily be a five minute card, but I've done a little bit more this time around.  The paper is vellum/parchment paper, coloured with a dorso crayon (spread with some lavender oil so it has a nice scent as well).  After it was thoroughly dry I ran it through the Cuttlebug using a paisley embossing folder and then added some gold-edged satin ribbon and Kaiser flowers to finish.  Apart from waiting until the oil dried, I think that made it a 10 minute card!!

ROLLED ROSES

These lovely cards were made by Norma Johnson.  The black card features ladies from a Sparklelight topper sheet on Regal's 3 square, 3 panel craft cards.  (You can get these in bright pink and in lime green as well).

The white card features a Cuttlebug cut and emboss frame

Both cards feature hand-rolled flowers and punched leaves and have been finished with peel off stickers.

We really do have some talented customers!!

VINTAGE COLLAGE CARD

Here is another great collage card by Trudy Meijer.  She has used pages and images from actual children's books, and overstamped them with some Graphic 45 images from Hampton Art.  Lots of inking and some coiled paper roses complete the panel which has been constructed using one of Regal's brown singlefold cards as a base.

BUTTERFLY PUNCH CARD

Leith Laws made this lovely butterfly card.   She used a Regal smooth white singlefold card as a base and then added a circle of  butterflies cut from Kaiser paper with a Martha Stewart punch.  A rub-on from Kaiser completes the design.  Leith is another of our lovely customers who have agreed to share some of their work, so there will be some more cards from her in the coming weeks

VINTAGE LADIES

These cards were made by Lorraine Porter, who is well known through one of the Exeter craft groups. She has used the vintage lady stamp from Kaiser's Charlotte's Dream set to make two classic and beautiful cards.
The one on the left uses Regal's book card.  (If you look on Regal's website you'll see that its available in a selection of colours).  Lorraine has made an insert and drawn on the suggestion of pages to complete "the look".
The second card has been first backed with black card and then mounted on a Regal singlefold burgundy card.  Outline stickers have been used to finish the design.
Both cards feature an embellishment of handmade rolled roses with punched leaves.

PRINTED FELT APPLE CARD

This is one of Regal's cute apple cut-out cards.  I popped some paper scraps behind the stalk and leaves but the body of the apple is made with felt.  I inked the "bumpy" side of a Cuttlebug paisley embossing folder with silver ink and then ran it through the machine with the felt inside so that the pattern from the folder was printed onto the felt.  Its quite an effective technique, and very quick.  If you don't want to stain your embossing folder, though, it's a good idea to use a water-based ink and wash it up straight away in some warm soapy water.

FABRIC COLLAGE CARDS

These lovely cards were made by the talented Trudy Meijer, who brought in some cards to show us, and kindly agreed to let me share them with you via the blog. Trudy has used one of Regal's square gold cards as a base, and after creatively using repurposed clothing as a background, Has added various embellishments including paper flowers, ribbons. lace and buttons.  

GREEN AND GOLD SAILBOAT

Maz made this card to celebrate the success of Australia's Olympic sailors!  The striped paper comes from the Graphic45 Domestic Goddess range, and Maz has coloured the "Best Wishes" sticker with a permanent marker to make it fit into the overall colour scheme which is...of course.....green and gold!!

SPARKLELIGHT FLORAL CARD

Janet has made this pretty card using a variety of flowers and a Sparklelight backing sheet.  Sparklelight is delicately etched and it reflect lights adding  a sense of movement.  Unfortunately it makes photography difficult, so you'll have to believe me when I say that even although this card looks nice on the screen, its even more beautiful in reality.

VINTAGE FASHION CALENDAR

This is another one of Lynne's lovely calendars.  The photo is a tad dodgy because we already have it up on display immediately underneath a flourescent light and my little camera hasn't really done justice to this lovely project.  (Yes I know......I'm blaming the equipment, not the operator).

Anyway.....and more importantly, Lynne used ribbon to attach one of Regal's little calandar pads to a panel decorated with Graphic 45 paper, a handmade rosette and a beautiful pencil-coloured stamp from Darkroom Door.  (Yes.....it is hand-coloured!)  The end-result is a beautiful vintage piece that could take pride of place in any room.

KOALA CARD

Zoe made this lovely Koala Card.  She used a Regal Singlefold smooth white card as a base, and added a background of green swiss dots  and brown Bazzill card.  The cute koala is a Stamp-It stamp that Zoe has stamped out twice and coloured.  She's then cut a section from one of the images and mounted it on top of the other using some double-sided foam tape to add some height.  The greeting is an outline sticker, and the finishing touches were added with a piece of real bark for the tree branch and an actual leaf on top of the greeting.

SHOPPING BAG TILT CARD

The perspective is slightly dodgy, but hopefully you can still get the idea of this card.

 I've used one of Regal's tilt (easel) cards for the base, which I've covered in crimson and salmon paper and added a bit of bling with rhinestones. The top strip is just a piece of white card with salmon on top adorned with a couple of flower stickers (stuck onto crimson card and cut out) and a greetings sticker.

The bag is a clear sticker from the Starform
Stitch design range.  I've put some plain crimson paper under the side and some really pretty Japanese paper underneath the main design.

After that I've stuck the whole thing around three sides with a single row of double-sided tape to a piece of crimson card to make a pocket, cut it out and mounted it onto the folding panel.  Its just thse right size to add a gift card or voucher or some money or even a few mini craft supplies such as rhinestones or split pins as a gift.

Even although I've probably made it sound harder than it actually is, this is really quite a quick card to make and there are no complicated techniques to conquer.  Its really all cutting and sticking.

STAND-UP CALENDARS

Here are another couple of calendars from Lynne's demo.  Both of them are made with a similar structure - just in a different size.  You can see from the side picture how Lynne has scored and secured the base so the calendars will sit flat (e.g. for posting).  The larger calendar features Kaiser stamps which have been coloured with Copic markers.  Lynne has then added highlights by embossing the middle of the flowers with polysparkle embossing powder and adding some little rhinestones.  Little calendar pads from Regal complete the projects.

CHRISTMAS TREE

CHRISTMAS TREE CARD

Who says Christmas trees have to be green?!  In this example, all I've done is stick some little gold star split pins through some corrugated gated card and  popped it behind one of Regal's three panel Christmas tree cut-out cards (which not only provides the tree shape but hides the legs of the split pins too).  The sticker star, greeting, and blue border are optional.  I'm pretty happy with the result given how easy it was to make.  If you used stickers instead of a stamp and skipped the blue line you could mass-produce these really quickly for Christmas.  I always have good intentions of starting to make Christmas cards at this time of year but in reality usually leave it until the last minute.  Maybe I should run up a batch of these now and enjoy feeling unusually smug for the rest of the year!!

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TEAPOT CARDS - new product from Regal

This card is the very newest release from Regal......and I mean VERY new, it only came down to the shop late yesterday.  Tania and I did have a little time beforehand to play........and these are the results.  The cards hinge at the top, and are made from smooth white cardstock so they are easy to colour or stamp if you don't want to cover them with decorative papers.  We'll try and get a few more examples done in the coming weeks.