More than one blast from the past.

My brother in law has been sorting out  his mum's personal effects after she  sadly passed away in February. She kept a box she called her treasure box. In her treasure box she kept all the things she valued. The contents of her treasure box would be considered rubbish by anyone else. 
Among her treasures were pretty much all the cards I made her over the years. A lot of the cards I made her were made long before I found Stampin' Up or before I had a blog.
  Dave asked if I would like my cards back,  Of course  I said yes. I thought it would be interesting to see how my cards have changed over the years and some may even be a source of inspiration for new cards.
 So I thought I might share a few of them with you.

You have to remember when some of these cards were made there  was  not the vast array of tools and  materials  available as there are today.  I didn't do much stamping in those days as I struggled with colouring the images and I didn't understand the different types of ink. I hated the fact I always got embossing powder stuck where I didn't want it. I didn't have Google,  YouTube , the craft channels or  a crafty friend to ask where I was going wrong.  So all my stamping stuff got packed away for years. Then I found Stampin' Up and my whole crafting world changed. So there is little or no stamping on the cards in this post.

I remember making this one. The flower was punched out using a huge petal punch that was so hard to use.  

The sentiment was printed using a my pc and printer.
The heart border is a Martha Stewart punch and it's one of my favourite punches along with the fern punch I used on this card. I made the box and decorated it to coordinate with the card.
It seemed I liked making boxed cards then.

The next card was created in Alan's mums favourite colour "green". This card has three layers to it, an acetate wrap on which an oval panel was glued. Then all those flowers were stuck to the panel.  The edges of the acetate were trimmed with gold peel off borders. I am thinking this was the first birthday card I made for her after Hubby and I got married because it contains some of the wired sparkles from our wedding. the next layer is a white base card with a  broad strip of green paper on one side. The last layer is the insert. This insert was probably the most involved and fancy insert I have ever done.  it's funny but if you had asked me what the insert of this card was like last week before seeing it again , I would have sworn the image was in colour. I do remember printing it off in colour, but obviously  changed my mind and used a black and white version.  Again I made a box for it.

  

This Christmas card  I think may have been a kit I bought from a craft show.  as I recall it was a bit of a fiddly, fussy card to make. I didn't enjoy making this one and I was quite pleased when it was finished.



She also had our wedding invitations and order of service in her treasure box along with the tags I had made to go on her presents on her birthday , Christmas and Mother's day.











                                                                                        


We kept our wedding invitations very simple as we only had 12 weeks to plan and get our wedding organized, so we didn't have time for complex  invitations. 

This is the stack of cards Dave gave me back. I won't bore you will sharing all of them. The later cards are probably already on here .