Non-traditional Christmas cards

Hello,

Well, we had our Christmas this morning and all the presents have been unwrapped. The girls sure were excited when they did their scavenger hunt for their new bikes! I received a lot of useful things for my month long trip that I am embarking on Christmas Eve day. I will be off to Central America, spending time in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and Mexico. You can catch the details of this exciting adventure on the blog my friend and I have set up at http://karenandstaceyadventures.blogspot.com We are sure to have an exciting time and I expect to come back several pounds lighter with all of the activities we'll be doing. It's not a 4-star comfort trip, it's a backpacking and hostel trip.

So on to the cards. I have a couple of non-traditional cards to post first. They are non-traditional in terms of the colours used. You'll also note that I got a Cuttle bug for Christmas. Whoot! Naturally, I made use of it today while working to get my cards done.

Card #1

Black and red were the colours of choice today. I decided to use some of the black Gemstone paper as my A2 card base. My friend, Tasha, had given me some pretty red paper that has embossed swirls on it. She knows I like papers that have an aged appearance. I cut it at 3.75" and 5" and used it as my first layer. Then I took smaller piece of the black cut at 2.75 x 4". I used my Cuttle bug and embossed it with the Victoria folder. I stamped the image using black ink on the ivory gemstock and cut it used my Antique scissors. I then lightly inked the edges with a dark gray to meet up with the black stamped image. I used my antique scissors to cut the edge of the paper. I used a black checked ribbon to make a bow for the front.

The inside is a piece of the ivory paper cut with my antique scissors and inked with gray.

Card #2

Using the same card stock, I made a second A2 card. For this one I used the red paper from my Mistle Toe pack (CTMH) and embossed it using Spots & Dots. As the paper has a white core, I used the sanding block from my distressing kit (I had just gotten it from CTMH and had not yet used it) to lightly sand off some of the colour off the raised circles and dots. I layered some of the ivory Gemstone paper on top of this and applied a cute dimensional snow lady sticker. The edges of the ivory paper have been distressed with a tool from my kit. Finally, I stamped "Deck the Halls" (CTMH) layering a creamy brown ink from Box Colours and a dollar store red ink to get just the right shade.

The inside of the card is a simple rectangle of ivory paper with a sticker of red boot skates on it.

Card #3

Cuttle bug fun! This is actually the first card that I used my new machine on. I used the Spots & Dots folder to emboss white paper which I layered on a card of blue Gemstone paper. A bit of ribbon to complement the blue. An interesting snowman dimensional sticker from WalMart and a simple stamped sentiment to finish it off. I was amazed at what embossing can do to fancy up a very simple card.

A few snowflake stickers from the same sticker pack and a white rectangle of paper to write on is all that was needed to finish the inside of the card.

Card #4

This card was made using papers and stickers from Close to My Heart. The tree, sentiment and strips on the top and bottom of the patterned paper are all stickers. I ran the ivory strip underneath the tree sticker through the Cuttle bug using the Victoria folder. To give it even more depth, I lightly inked the raised edges with some green and creamy brown inks. A few gemstones here and there added a little bling to this card.

The inside has some ivory paper edged with sticker strip.

Well, that's it for today. I hope to make a few more cards yet this evening. Tomorrow will be a busy day with school for the kids, taking hubby to the airport to fly back to work for two weeks and I'll start packing for my trip! At some point during that, I must get more cards done and a whack of them mailed away. Time is running out!

The Magic of Christmas

The Colour Green

The first card is one that centered on a dimensional sticker that I had purchased last year and never used. The Christmas tree has several shades of green on it, so I decided to focus on green.
I started with an A2 card that I made from half of a sheet of Gemstone paper in ivory. This paper has such a nice sparkle to it. In keeping with the outdoorsy theme of the tree, I found some green paper that had cute little reindeer on it. A little strip of green snowflake ribbon finished it off along with the sentiment stamped in green.

Naturally, I added a strip of the matching paper onto the inside.

The second card is the same as one I had made previously, only instead of blue, I focused on green and made paper and ribbon changes accordingly.


Have a great weekend!

A Collection of Christmas Cards

Just a quick blog today as it's birthday party day and we have a lot to get ready for our Christmas tomorrow, also!

All of these cards were made using Gemstone paper or CM paper as the card base and and a paper pack from the Dollar Giant store. The stickers were from Michael's dollar bins. Ribbon and gems that were added were also from Michael's at some point.

Some simple layers. A bit of bling to the inside with a stamped sentiment (CTMH).

Using the same striped paper in a different way.

Another of the papers that I cut so that the front already looked layered. A simple stamp inside (CTMH) and it was done!

They were all quick and simple to put together. I hope they give you some ideas! Have a great Friday.

Penguin Birthday Cake

Tomorrow is Elaina's 10th birthday and she wanted penguins on her cake. I couldn't find any little penguin figurines anywhere and with it being Christmas at our house on Saturday, I didn't have time to try my hand at making fondant ones! So off to Michael's I went and I found some of their foam kits that were perfect! The one kit actually makes a winter scene and I took the igloo from it for the top of the cake.


Another container had all sorts of polar bears, penguins (which technically would never meet each other unless at a zoo!), snowflakes, igloos, and stars. I have used the penguins from that container. The other foam items are going to be used in our craft at the birthday party, but I'll post pics of that another time.




I didn't have the proper pans to make a octagonal shaped cake like she wanted to I had to wing it using round pans for the top part and a rectangle pan for the bottom. They certainly didn't look like octagons when I was done, but she liked it anyways. I used a butter cream icing and sprayed it blue. I also attached some icing snowflakes that were blue and white. We found them at the Bulk Barn.



The melting snow was made out of marshmallow fondant. The taste of this fondant is so much better than the bought stuff and it is super easy to make. I just cut wavy strips and adhered it to the cake with a bit of icing. I didn't do that great of a job, but again, Elaina thinks it looks fantastic and that's all that matters.

Well, I'd better sign off. I have about a million Christmas cards left to make, presents to wrap before Saturday, and party decorations to make for tomorrow! Have a great Friday!

Winter Snowflakes on Blue

Hello!

Here is another blue card that has a little sparkle.



This is an A2 card made from the blue Gemstones paper. I added a strip of ivory and a patterned strip of paper that I had leftover from some other project. The patterned paper has different coloured snowflakes on it, so I decided to add some blue sparkly foam snowflakes that I got in a pack from WalMart. They weren't really going to show up well on the blue so I added green squares behind them as contrast. The green is Gemstone paper also. I used dimensionals to pop up these squares. I think I pressed a little too hard when I added the sentiment, but it still looks okay.



Since the dark Gemstone papers all have black on their other side, I added a piece of plain white card stock to the inside and used a couple of snowflake stickers to set it off. Hope you like it!

The Magic of Christmas in Blue

The Magic of Christmas

I decided to step away from the more traditional Christmas colours that I had been using and make a sparkly card that featured a deep blue. The paper is Gemstones from Recollection in ivory and dark blue. There is also a dark green little strip that I scalloped with scissors. The striped paper came from a pack of Christmas papers that I had purchased last year at Michael's. The dark blue ribbon has stitching on it but also some sparkly iridescent dots that really pick up the rest of the colours. Instead of making a bow, I just tied another strip of ribbon around the longer piece and clipped the ends. The sentiment was a single stamp that I found in the dollar bins and of course, I popped it up with dimensionals.



In keeping with the simplicity of the outside, I simply added a strip of paper and a small sentiment. Blue was a nice change of pace.

Simple Wishes

Good morning, on this blustery chilly morning. What better way to stay warm and cosy then by making Christmas cards. Here is a very simple one using CTMH papers, a few gems, and a little wooden stamp. The ornament was a sticker from CTMH and the flower was made using SchoolBook Plantin and my Expression. I curled the ends around a pencil to give it a little more life.

A couple of pieces of coordinating paper in the inside for a writing surface and it's done.


This was a quick and easy card and several could be made in a short time. Have a great wintery day!

Ho Ho Ho Christmas Card

Ho Ho Ho

Another card made with this year's favourite papers. The Mistletoe Pack from Close to My Heart. I have made 8 cards with this pack so far and I think I have enough paper to make at least 8 more, plus bits left over to mix and match with other papers. I haven't used any of it for LO pages because I've been concentrating on cards, but maybe after Christmas!


As you can see this card has several layers. It is an A2 sized card and one of these days, I'll start keeping track of the other measurements that I use, but for now I just wing it and see what looks good to me. For this card there were 5 different layers on top of the original card stock.
The candy cane and gift box stamps were from CTMH and the Santa stamp was from a pack that I picked up at Michael's. I attempted to use my water colour pencils again, but I'm still not doing it right! Oh well, practice makes perfect, they say. I used a white gel pen to make the scroll work at the bottom.


Inside the card I added a layer of the ivory, a red square gem and some pen work. All of my papers were inked with a creamy brown Box Colour ink and I used my Antique scissors to cut some of them out to give it a different look.

Over the hills and through the woods...

Hello, back to the card making. This card has a lot of layers, but is still a very simple design. I hope you like it!



I used CTMH papers for this card and inked all the edges. I also pinched some of the edges to give them more of a distressed look. Can't wait to get my Distressing Kit and really go to town! I love the look of aged cards. I used brown ink to stamp both the sentiment and the sledding image. I coloured the girl on the sled with my water colour pencils. The circles were cut using my CM circle cutters which after almost 10 years, I still love.



As you can see from this view, I popped the circles up off the card with dimensionals. I also used some leftover strips of paper, heavily inked, to finish the inside of the card off.

This was the card when I first finished it. A bit of brown ribbon and some gold gems finished it off. I kept looking at it though, thinking that something was missing. The original design was in my CTMH catalogue and it had a silk flower attached to it. So I got out my Cricut and using a flower off of Plantin SchoolBook, I cut a flower for mine out of patterned paper. I curled the edges slightly around a pencil and added a pearl to the center. Now, it looked finished! As you can see at the top of the blog, the flower just gives it that little something something that was missing.

Re-purposing a box

I am giving my Granddaughter crafting supplies because at the age of 4, she is beginning to get crafty and likes to draw and make pictures. I decided I needed something cool for her to keep her stuff in, so this is what I came up with.


I decided to use the box that fundraising chocolates had come in and make her a craft box. It is sturdy and has a handle, but was not very pretty and as a princess, she likes things pretty!


I had some pretty pink and blue plaid material which I decided to decoupage onto the box. It also has gold lines through it, which I thought would really appeal to the princess in her.

I opened up the box and laid it out flat to cut out the material. I should have made a paper template first, but I decided I really needed to get this project done and so I didn't. The result is that when I went to decoupage the material it wasn't perfect, but as always, there are ways to hide imperfections...

add some BLING! I had picked up this bright pink ribbon that has silver sparkly circles on it. It was in the Christmas ribbon section at Michael's and I had purchased it for cards, but this is a great place to use it. I used my ATG gun to adhere it. I hope it is a strong enough adhesive. If not, my daughter will just have to get her glue gun out and re-attach it! And of course, I had to add some big pink gems.


FCCB's Challenge for this week was to create a gift or gift package and this box is acting as both. It is something that she can use, and it is holding all of the craft supplies that we are giving her. The Cricut cuts I chose included the large golden M from Plantin SchoolBook and the phrases are from the Solutions cartridge "Home Decor". I cut the M as large (can't remember if it was 5" or 4") as I could using the multi-cut feature as the gold chipboard was fairly heavy. The bright blue phrases were cut at 1 1/2" and 2".


I added some bling to the M and the dot over the "i" in Memories. I also added a silk flower with a large pearl gem in the center and voila the crafting box was finished. I hope she likes it. If my daughter is reading this blog, look away! Pretend you did not see this!

Penguin Party Invites

So today, I decided to make the invitations for Elaina's 10th birthday party coming up. Since her birthday is in December, she has chosen to go with a winter and penguin theme. Today we designed her invitations and then while they were out playing in the snow, I got to work.


We went through my Wild Cards cartridge to find a shape for her invitations. There are a lot of cute cards on this cartridge and the shapes can be used for much more. She ended up choosing this shape which is a folded invitation card (key #6 for those who use a numbering system). The blue paper is from my gemstone pack. I gave her the choice between white, black and blue because of the theme. I think the blue turned out really nice. The other side is black and not sparkly. I cut it at 4" and used My Martha Stewart score board to score and fold it on the marks.


Using the black sparkly paper, I cut out the phrases for this invitation at 4" also. Every element on the card is designed to size properly together. I attached the "Your Invited" to the folded front of the card so that it shows up inside the window.


On the inside of the card, I used a lightweight plain white card stock and cut the liner at 4" so it would be an exact fit. I placed the black phrases that I cut at the 4" setting along the left hand side. The phrases were all quite small so I held them with my Tweezerbees and used Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive which has a nice fine end on it.


I had some Penguin stickers from CM that I added to the inside bottom flap. I used a white opaque marker to add snowflakes and snow for the penguins to stand on. I also put a penguin and some snow on the closed front flap. After I had written all the relevant details inside with a blue marker, I folded it shut and held it closed with a foam snowflake sticker.

Here are the finished cards. I think they look fabulous and Elaina really liked them when they were done!



Now I have 2 weeks left to get the rest of the things ready for the party. The cake should be interesting based on the design she's picked out. Wish I had a Cricut Cake! But all in all, it's nice to have part of it done well in advance!

Deck the Halls

Deck the Halls Christmas Card

Hi there!

Another Christmas card using my favourite music note paper from CTMH. I just love paper that has music on it or writing of some sort.

The stamped sentiment is also from Close to My Heart as is the paper and the ornament and scroll work sticker. The Santa was created using my Expression and some gemstone paper that sparkles. The cartridge was Very Merry Tags. I simple clipped off the hole at the top where ribbon is supposed to go. This mini cart has great tags on it and they are very easy to make. I was very heavy on the ink on this card, but I like the effect.


On the inside, I simply adhered a sticker journal ling tag from the same pack of CTMH stickers.
Another card done!