Christmas card challenges

Christmas card challenges for July!! I combined Sylvia's angel challenge with Karen's purple challenge to create these Christmas cards. They also qualify for the "Anything goes" theme over at Year round Christmas cards. I stamped and embossed the angel on glossy cardstock then applied alcohol inks starting with yellows in the halo and wing areas followed by three different purples over the rest of the surface trying to concentrate the eggplant in the dress part. I love the way they turned out. I layered the angel onto white cardstock with a scalloped edge. I had difficulty getting my MS doily border punch to punch my six layers so I substituted my SU eyelet border punch for the last two. I expect it may have been the high humidity that caused problems with the very intricate design of the MS punch. I layered a white cardstock strip accented with purple fiber below the image and added a silver confetti star with 3D foam tape. A simple greeting of "Rejoice" is silver embossed at the bottom of the card.

I am really enjoying these challenges!! I have a few to catch up on which I should be able to do this month. So I add these six to my stash. I have counted my Christmas cards and I have 48!!! It is great that I have this many made already and we are only in July!! Join us!!

I used envelopes from my stash which dictated the different format for these cards.

Therese

Spirelli cards

Spirelli has shown up for me in lot of places this week - magazine, blogs and galleries, so I decided to give it a try.

You can check out a tutorial here for instructions on doing spirelli. I have placed this link under Tutorials on the right hand side of my blog.

I used the SU scallop punch to create my shape and some very thin embroidery/serger thread for winding around the shape. The pattern you get depends on how many bumps you skip when you are winding. You can go to your right or left - you will get a different pattern on the back of your shape depending on which way you go. I started by taping the end of my yellow thread on the back of my blue shape, came to the front in a valley between bumps and skipped two bumps as I moved to the left. I went around twice because it helped to emphasize the pattern with more thread on it. Took about two feet of thread but I did not cut it until I was finished and had taped it to the back of my shape.

To create my embellishments I layered a punchie shape* created with my SU five petal punch, a little flower punchie and a large yellow brad. I layered these over some contrasting yellow and blue decorative paper accented with a white scalloped strip (SU scallop border punch) leaving enough space at the bottom to reveal my colour printed greetings. I added some dots with a gel pen or piercing to the scallops on the strip and the embellishment to help give them some texture.
Really happy with my cards though it did take me a while to figure out what supplies to use for my spirelli and to come up with a sketch that best featured my cute little embellishments.

*Want to know how I made this little punchie shape?? You punch one shape with the five petal punch, temporarily stick it to a piece of scrap paper and reinsert it into your punch and punch it again with the valleys exactly in the middle of the petals and you get this sort of starburst shape!! You can check out the tutorial here or follow the link under Tutorials called Punch Embellishments video on the right hand side of my blog.

Two of these cards are off for my card exchange this month and another to my sister for her birthday.

I discovered a video tutorial while I was searching for spirelli instructions that shows you how to make several different flowers with the scallop punch!! Check it out here. You can also follow the link under Tutorials called Scallop punch flower video.

Therese