I am very grateful to my Mum and to my Grandmother for the wonderful crafting skills I learned from them. They both influenced me greatly: My Mum with her sewing skills and my Grandmother with her crafting prowess. Home making skills were a necessary part of our lives and we sewed everything that we wore and crafted many of the decor items around our home. So in honour of those days, here's a set of cards which celebrates the things that our Mothers and Grandmothers held dear. These very feminine cards are inspired by the crafts of days gone by when handmade meant quality! All the papers and embellishments featured are from Collections Elements . Hand embroidery was a wonderful past time for ladies of all ages and they were very skilled with a needle and embroidery floss, creating beautiful table cloths and duchess sets for their dressing tables. I still have some treasured items in my linen cupboard which have been handed down through the family. And whilst the bobbins on my card ......

  Thanks for stopping by this leg of the Sizzix Vintage Fresh Blog Hop . It's week 5 of the 6 week blog hop and Designers on this leg of the hop are using the Sizzix ScoreBoards XL Die - Bag, Suitcase (Item #657124) . I got to have a little play with this die a while back and created bonbonnières for my Dad's 80th birthday party. You can see how I put the suitcase together in this post . This time around, I've created a jewellery gift box for a pin made with a Katiedids component, one of the supporting manufacturers of the blog hop.   The box is constructed from an offcut of velvet matt board which I found at a local framers. Matt board is  such a sturdy material but the Sizzix ScoreBoard dies have no problem handling such a thick material and cut through it like butter. The instructions for assembling the box are very simple and you can download a step by step pdf from Sizzix . I didn't use the handle or the lid tab for this project. I've decorated the box with pa......