Saturday, October 28, 2023

Christmas card kits - Peace on Earth gold embossed on brown, a layer of red vellum and beautiful flourished metallic paper for the background

This is my last set of 6 card kits for my friend.  I started by embossing this elegant image of a dove and a Peace on Earth greeting (Stampendous) onto small pieces of brown cardstock.  I trimmed them to size and then used my distress tool to roughen up the edges.  I added clear glitter gel pen to the leaves and the earth below.  I trimmed pieces of red vellum to size and then ran my pattern tracing wheel to the four sides to create four rows of paper piercing.  I paired these two elements with beautiful metallic paper with  wonderful flourishes.  I cut green cards for all of them.  I glued the decorative paper to my green card.  I adhered the dove image to my vellum piece with double sided tape and then adhered this larger element to my card front using double sided tape.  Love how it turned out!!!  Therese
 

Christmas card kits - cute little tree tags over hand decorated backgrounds

While I was in my stash of Christmas supplies I also found this set of tags which I printed off a while back.  They are also from Homemade Gifts made Easy.   I trimmed them from the sheet using my paper trimmer, added a large gold brad in the hole at the top and a gold confetti star to the tops of the trees using glue dots.  Next, I embellished the pots with gold gel pen and gold shimmer water colour.  Added a tiny bit of brown watercolour to the stems as well.  I auditioned them with several different backgrounds and eventually selected two different hand decorated ones from my stash. They are paste paper from a session I did a while back with my sister.  We had a lot of fun that day!!!  I trimmed them to size and ran my pattern tracing wheel on all four edges.  I trimmed dark green card fronts for all of them.  The tags still needed something to I added two short lengths of gold ribbon which I secured with double sided tape.  That was much better!!  So I adhered my background to my card front, added 3D foam tape to the back of my tag and secured it over my background.  Green and gold - great Christmas colours.  Therese
 

Christmas card kits - black and white tags with colourful seam binding

For this set of card kits I used tags I found in my stash.  They are printed from a printable PDF that I downloaded from Handmade Gifts made Easy.  I printed them in black and white probably in error a while back and when I dug them out I thought they would work well with a neutral colour scheme and bright seam binding.  I cut black cardstock and gray backgrounds for all of them.  The tags were trimmed from the letter sized sheet of paper with my paper trimmer.  I punched the hole at the top with a hole punch.  I chose six different colours of seam binding and cut two pieces - one long one and then a shorter one.  I tied the shorter one to the longer one with a single knot and then inserted the bottom end of the long piece into the hole sliding the tied piece to allow enough on each end of the longer one to be folded over the top and bottom of the decorative paper.  I added two strips of 3D foam tape to the back of the tag on each side of the ribbon and two pieces of double sided tape on the top and bottom of the back of the decorative paper.  I adhered the tag to my decorative paper and then folded the ribbon ends over the top and bottom securing them to the tape.  I trimmed off the ends if they were too long.  I added glue to the center area and adhered it to my black card.  I trimmed the ends of the shorter piece to be reasonably even.  These all have different greetings on them so they will all be different though they all have the same card and decorative paper.  Again, I added extra little pieces of release paper between the tape and backer to facilitate their removal.  Therese
 

Christmas card kits - a cute little gingerbread man and a snowflake

I got an order for some Christmas card kits from a good friend of mine.  She has limited vision so I made an effort to make the card kits user friendly for her.  I assembled the focal elements and added little piece of release paper between the pieces of double sided tape & 3D foam tape so they could be easily be identified and removed.  She really loves making cards so I know she will be enjoying the process of making these up in preparation for the holidays.  

For this card I started with the little gingerbread man (SZ).  I die cut it from brown cardstock and then recut the little hearts from scraps of red cardstock and replaced them in his belly securing them in place on the back with regular tape.  I added small white rick rack to his arms and legs securing the ends on the back using double sided tape.  I added a small scrap of black behind his eyes and secured that with regular tape.  He still needed a bit of something so I tied white cording around his neck - that was better!!!  I found the red strips in my scraps and cut them to fit either landscape or portrait with a bit of trimming.  I added a snowflake punchie to it using a brown brad.  It allows the strip to be used horizontally or vertically with the snowflake on either end.  I added double sided tape to the back of the snowflake strip and to the back of the decorative paper as well as a strip of 3D foam tape to the back of the gingerbread.  I used all different backgrounds and cardstock colours.  I made one up for a sample and she had five kits to put together.    Therese