Deck the Halls Birdbrain

It seems I am on a roll when it comes to creating Christmas cards, and about time too, because Christmas is approaching fast and I still have quite a few cards to make...

Fortunately, this card came together quite fast. After printing this adorable Free Stamp of the Month November chick (Deck the Halls Birdbrain) by From the Heart Stamps, together with one of the accompanying sentiments (this one really cracks me up), I used my Spectrum Noir coloured pencils to add a soft layer of colour and then blended it using a paper stump and odourless mineral spirits. I cut the panel using my SSS stitched rectangle die, matted it onto some pink cardstock from my stash and adhered it to an A2 sized card base. As a finishing touch, I added a little clear Wink of Stella and coated the ornaments and eyes with Glossy Accents.

Challenges:

FTHS Free Stamp of the Month Challenge

Merry Monday - 182 Birds

The Challenge - 53 Non-traditional Christmas card
SSS Wednesday challenge - Anything goes
SSS Work it Wednesday November - Holiday cards
The Cutie Pie - 93 'Simply' Cute and Christmassy

Christmas robin

Earlier this week, I won a digital stamp during Beccy's Month of Christmas Card challenge. Her next challenge prompt (Day 29) was to use the newest item in your stash. So I knew what was being expected of me lol.

I had picked this particular image (Baby robin) from Beccy's shop because I had left her a comment earlier this week saying that I loved to see coloured birds on cards but was a little scared to colour them myself. Me and my big mouth...

Anyway, I printed the image onto Neenah solar white cardstock, grabbed my Spectrum Noir coloured pencils and a book on European birds (purchased last May), took a good look at the European robin and set to work. And I have to confess I really loved colouring this sweet image using pencils AND I love how it turned out.

After my colouring was done, I had a look at my container of Christmas offcuts and found these three patterned paper pieces; the large one and two smaller ones. Just perfect for this week's sketch at Tuesday Morning Sketches. It's been ages since I've played along, but then it's also ages since I made a layered card.

After putting the card together, I thought it needed just a little something extra, so I added a few stray embellishments I happened to have put in my bits and bobs container. The sentiment is from the Merry Everyday stamp set by Simon Says Stamp.

Challenges:

Beccy's Place - A Month of Christmas Cards - Day 29 Something new

Tuesday Morning Sketches - TMS#328

Jingle Belles - Holiday leftovers

Christmas Card Challenges - 52 Anything goes
Papertake Weekly - Take your pick: Colours - Red and/or green
SSS Wednesday challenge - Anything goes
SSS Work it Wednesday - Holiday cards

25 Days of Christmas tags - Holly

After seeing Natasha's tag on day 24 of the 25 Days of Christmas Tags, I immediately thought of the small holly stamps I had in my stash. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to put them to good use.
BTW, the inspiration for day 24 came from the Design Team of the Muse: Christmas Vision card club. Somehow I had completely missed this week's post, but I blame it on my computer (the hard disk of my laptop was failing, so I had to confiscate my husband's laptop and set it up so that I could continue working until the new hard disk arrives, and deliver my translation work with the slightest possible delay).

I stamped two panels, one using an outlined image to be coloured the way Natasha had done, and one using solid images (Brushstroke Christmas by Julie, Essentials by Ellen) and my new Altenew crisp inks.

I didn't have enough time to colour the outlined images, so I went with the panel with solid images first. For the sentiment, I stamped the JOY stamp (from another stamp set designed by Julie Ebersole) using Altenew ink onto a snippet of vellum and heat-embossed in clear embossing powder and then stamped the second part of the sentiment using black Altenew ink. I fussy cut sentiment and adhered it to the tag using pieces of transparent dimensinal tape. Most of my ribbons are hidden in a box somewhere, but I did find this gorgeous ribbon (Really Reasonable Ribbon) in my drawer. A bow of Hemptique twine was added and another tag was finished.

Challenges:

25 Days of Christmas Tags
Muse: Christmas Visions 30
Rudolph Days Challenge

25 Days of Christmas tags - Merry

After savouring all of the wonderful inspiration that appeared on Tracey's blog these past 25 days, I finally found some time to play along and link up during the final hours of the challenge.

This tag was inspired by Danielle's tag on day 15. I loved the soft ink blending behind the vellum and the peek-through stars. I tried to recreate the tag using the supplies I had, but instead of cutting out a corner of the vellum and stamping the sentiment, I cut the vellum at an angle and adhered a die cut from a snippet of red cardstock I found in one of my boxes with left-over papers and cardstock.

Challenges:

25 Days of Christmas Tags

Jingle Belles - Holiday leftovers

Santa's on his way

This weeks's prompt at Less is More is a one-layer card inspired by Santa. I rummaged through my stash trying to find a Santa image, found several digital images that might work, and then my order of two Crafter's Companion Inspiration magazines arrived two days ago, including a Christmas stamp set by Sheena Douglass. Talk about perfect timing.

So I set to work masking off a strip on my card where I wanted to create my scene and punched out a circle mask for my moon. I created my night sky by blending distress inks and adding a little more ink at the bottom after removing my circle mask.

The sentiment is from a Kelly Purkey set and was stamped in Memento Tuxedo black and after my inked panel was fully dry, I heat embossed Santa and his reindeer using Liquid platinum embossing powder. I rounded the corners of my card using my corner chomper and my card was finished.

Challenges:

Less is more - 250 One layer - Santa

Beccy's Place - A month of holiday cards - Day 6 Masking
ATSM - 171 Anything goes
SSS Wednesday challenge - Christmas
Addicted to CAS - 76 Hero

White Christmas

Beccy of Beccy's Place inspired me to try my hand at a white on white Christmas card for her Month of Holiday cards challenge.

Edited to explain how I suspended my snowflake ornament in the aperture on my card:

I cut the snowflak twice from heat-embossed cardstock. I adhered a small piece of double-sided tape in the middle of each snowflake and liquid glue on the delicate parts. I then placed a long thread from top to bottom and put my second snowflake on top. I adhered the thread at the top and bottom to the backside of my circle frame using another piece of double-sided tape, snipped off the extra lengths of thread and adhered the combined frame and snowflake to the front of my card. I had used the smaller of the two circle dies to cut the aperture from the front of my card. Because the snowflake fits snugly in the aperture, you cannot see the thread I've used to attach it between the card and the circle frame.

Materials:

Neenah solar white cardstock

Stitched circle dies (SSS) - I used two sizes to cut my circle frame

Snowflake stencil (SSS)

Embossing paste (Marabu CreaPaste, Fine sand)

Snowflake die (SSS) - cut twice to sandwich a thread in between
and to make it look pretty on both sides

Judi Kins Irridescent embossing powder

Vellum

Sentiment stamp (SSS - Small Folded Banners)

White embossing powder (SSS)

Versamark embossing ink

Challenges:

Beccy's Place - A month of holiday cards - Day 13 White on white

Virginia's View Challenge - 20 Texture

The Paper Players - 271 CAS Christmas card

      

Not a mouse was stirring...

With Christmas a little over a month away, I really need to speed up my production of Christmas cards. For today's card, I did a little colouring using my Spectrum Noir coloured pencils and this cute wood mounted stamp by Penny Black that has been in my stash for quite a while but had never seen any ink until now.

I love how the coloured pencils add texture to the mouse's face. I die cut my panel using my favourite stitched rectangle dies (Simon Says Stamp) and layered it onto some slate cardstock and then onto a side-folding A2 card cut from lipstick red cardstock (both SSS). The sentiment is from a set by Die'sire and to finish things off, I added a little shimmer using clear Wink of Stella on the collar and the trees.

Challenges:

Beccy's Place - A month of holiday cards - Day 1 Coloured pencils

Colour Throwdown - CTD 368 - see image

Penny Black Saturday - November - Dies and/or punches
ABC Christmas Challenge - W for Wild thing
CASology - 172 Give

Penny Black and More - November - Anything Christmas

Funky Christmas tree

A few days ago, my husband came home with a box containing the Stamp of Approval Holiday Magic collection. The stamps and dies in this collection were hand-picked by Catherine Pooler and are just wonderful. I think this is the first time that I broke into my new stamps within 3 days of their arrival into my house.

I'm always having a hard time deciding which stamps to use first, but this time I let myself be inspired by the interesting colour combination over on the CAS Colours and Sketches blog. After picking my ink colours (Dark Chocolate by Papertrey ink, and Dandelion and Elderberry by Memento), I grabbed the Bright Baubles set by Neat and Tangled (none of the products in this SOA collection have been released to the general public as yet) and set to work, using my MISTI and a die cut panel I saved from a previous project (cut using a stitched rectangle die by SSS).

I stamped the tree trunk in brown ink and then added the various baubles in Dandelion and Elderberry ink. I also used my Elderberry ink to stamp the sentiment (from the same N&T set) and the background borders (Holiday Trimmings set by Winnie & Walter; also included in the SOA collection) on my base card. For some festive shimmer, I went over the baubles, star and background borders with clear Wink of Stella and adhered the stamped panel to my base card using foam tape.

Edited to link this card up to the Parade of SOA Holiday Cards.

I'm entering my card into the following challenges:

CAS Colours & Sketches - 149 Colour combo

ATSM - 169 CAS

52CCT - Pick a previous theme (21 Christmas trees)

Aud Sentiments - 144 Bingo + sentiment
 (middle column: stitching - stamp - glitter)

Paper pieced poinsettia

Cannot believe we're well into November already and that means I really need to get on with my Christmas cards. So I'm trying to squeeze in as much crafting time as I can and to actually create something instead of just thinking about the cards I want to create lol.

I started by stamping the outline image of the Poinsettia Christmas set by Verve Stamps onto a very old sheet of red patterned paper using black ink and then fussy cut the images, making sure to cut the small leaves that were peeking out at the back. I then stamped the solid image onto Rustic White cardstock by Papertrey Ink using Altenew Evergreen ink and my MISTI for perfect placement. I added a few score lines using my mini-scoreboard and stamped the sentiment from the same stamp set using Altenew Ruby Red ink. Love how that red stands out against the rustic white background. After adhering the red poinsettias over the stamped green poinsettias (it was at this point that I discovered I could rotate the red flowers so that the larger green leaf popped out on different sides of the flowers for a more random look). To finish, I added gold dots to the flower hearts using my ancient Vivan pearl pen.

The photograph did not turn out as I had hoped. I will try to take and upload another one that is less dark.

I'm entering my card into the following challenges:

LIM - 248 Paper piecing

Virginia's View Challenge - 20 Texture

ATSM - 169 CAS
52CCT - Pick a previous theme (#1 Christmas flowers)

FTHS stamp of the month October

Today I managed to do a little colouring and create a card with this month's stamp of the month by From the Heart Stamps, called Cornucopia.

After printing the image onto Neenah Solar white cardstock, I coloured the image using Spectrum Noir alcohol markers and used SN coloured pencils to add more shading to the aubergine and grapes. I created the background by colouring with my alcohol markers and then dabbing blender solution using a rag, a technique I picked up from Kathy Racoosin of The Daily Marker.

I die cut the panel using a stitched rectangle die (Simon Says Stamp) and stamped the sentiment from a Birthday sentiment set by Stampendous! using Archival black ink and my MISTI, which arrived 2 days ago, just in time for my birthday (which was yesterday). My husband was so relieved that it arrived in time lol.

I layered my panel onto a piece of orange PP from my stash, after giving the edges a bit more definition using Dried Marigold distress ink (Ranger). The panels were adhered to a top folding A2 card created from Rustic cream cardstock by Papertrey Ink. To finish things off, I went around the edges with my blending tool that still had some Dried Marigold on it, and I added Glossy Accents to the aubergine and the apples.

Challenges I'm entering:

FTHS - Digital stamp of the month October

Seize the Birthday - Anything birthday

Craft Your Passion - 285 Always Anything goes

Papertake Weekly - Take your pick (Colour: Halloween hues)
Kathy Racoosin's 30 day colouring challenge