Christmas cards featuring large snowflakes layered with smaller ones and greetings

For these two cards I cut one piece of white cardstock  4.25"x 5.5" using a large snowflake die (SU).  Having carefully situated the paper on the die I was able to use both pieces - the die cut snowflake and the opening it created in the piece of white cardstock.  

The first card features the snowflake die cut which I sponged a bit on the outside edges with blue ink.  I added regular tape to the back of the openings on the ends  and applied blue glitter from the front which nicely fills them with blingy colour.  I dug through my stash of precut snowflakes and found a medium sized one which worked so I sponged its extremities as well.  I added a blue snowflake sequin and adhered all of them together using a silver brad.  I adhered it to a navy blue flecked card and added a greeting below.  The greeting is laser printed, has a flagged end and was glittered all the way around with the same glitter used on the snowflake.  I used double sided tape on the ends and a piece of 3D foam tape in the middle and added it to my card for finish it off.  Love that navy flecked cardstock as it creates a night sky in a minute!!     

For the second card, I used the piece of white cardstock which had the opening in it.  I trimmed it to 4" x 5.25" and mounted a very bright orange yellow and pink background which I created using alcohol and ink from leftover in the inkjet cartridges when we changed them out last time.  Love the contrast and how well the snowflake opening is highlighted.  I layered a pink round sequin, an orange flower sequin, a gold snowflake sequin and a fabric snowflake to create the 3D embellishment for the center which I mounted with a tiny white brad.  I found this stamped greeting in my stash, trimmed it to size and sponged its edges.  Next, I sponged the edges of the white layer to coordinate with the greeting and mounted this large element to the front of an orange card.  Added the greeting below the snowflake using double sided tape.  Love this card with its non traditional colour scheme!!    Therese

Cards featuring a brayered background and some gold embossed images

Still making cards for my stash but have branched out into using supplies that have been sitting for a while.  These two cards feature brayered backgrounds I made years ago using the Kaleidacolour stamp pad - Creole Spice onto glossy cardstock.  I love this colour combo!!  For the first one, I added a bit of sponging using a torn paper edge to add a bit of texture to the multicoloured background.  I then stamped this ginko leaf image (SU) and embossed it with gold embossing powder.  I added a laser printed vellum greeting from my stash after tearing the bottom and top edges.  I added a layer of gold gift wrap before layering it onto this perfectly coordinating piece of background paper!!  With a large enough stash you can always find something that will coordinate!!  I layered this large element onto a navy card front!!!  Really love how this one turned out and how serendipitous it was to find a coordinating background paper (laser printed from Morgue File).  For the other card, I added a bit of definition to the background by sponging a few colours over the torn edge of paper to simulate a bit of a landscape.  I stamped and embossed in gold this set of trees (Lovely as a Tree - SU) and used my stamping jig to add a greeting in navy (SU).  I added a navy gros grain ribbon at the top and added three gold brads to finish it off.  I mounted this large element to a navy card front!!  Love this one too!!              Therese

Card kits - little birdie cards

A made up a few of the card kits from this March class to add to my stash!! Little birdie cards are very versatile because they can be used for a wide variety of occasions.  

These ones feature decorative paper layered onto coordinating cardstock as a base.  After drawing a beak and inserting a tiny black brad for the eye the bird die cut (TH) was inserted into the bird cage (TH) and secured with double sided tape at the bottom which ends up securing the rhinestones as well.  The wing was added next using 3D foam tape to give it some dimension.  Next, I secured the ribbon into the hole at the top of the cage using double sided tape and used both 3D foam tape and double sided to secure it to my card front.  I threaded the little greeting tag (die cut then stamped using a jig) on the ribbon before securing the other end to the inside of the card front with double sided tape.  I trimmed off the extra length and tied it with a single knot to the length on the front just above the cage to simulate a bow.  I used a small piece of 3D foam tape to secure the greeting in place after sponging it with a bit with ink.  To finish off my card I positioned clear rhinestones into the holes at the bottom of the cage!!              Therese

March Cardmaking - a handmade card featuring a little birdie in a cage

 

Little birdie cards are so versatile because they can be used for so many occasions!!

For our first card for cardmaking this time I decided we would make some!!  I choose decorative paper which had a decorative element on the left hand side and we positioned our little birds with their cages to the right of them.  This used some scrapbook paper which has been languishing in my stash because some of the papers were made for specialty layouts and had decorative elements that were not uniform.  A few more pages cut up and out of the bin!! 

Started by adhering the decorative paper to the coordinating card fronts.  Next, I cut the cages (TH SX) out of coordinating cardstock, trimmed off the finial and manually embossed the top with a round element from a gear embossing folder.  I die cut the birds and then the wings a different colour.  I started with the bird - created a beak with a marker and added a tiny black brad to create its eye.  I did not want mine behind the cage so I positioned it so it had its head sticking between the bars of the cage and glued the lower branch to the back of the cage.  I added the wing next using a little double sided tape.  Next, I added the hanging ribbon through the hole at the top, secured it with tape and slid on the little birdie tag before mounting this large element to my card front using white glue applied with a fine tip applicator.  The little tags were cut with a tag die (SX), stamped with a little stamp from a birdie set (SU) using a stamping jig and then had a little string tied on.  Next, I wrapped the ribbon to the inside of the card and secured it with double sided tape and tied the off cut to the front with a single knot to simulate a bow.  To finish off my card I glued rhinestones inside the holes at the bottom of the cage with white glue and secured my tag with 3D foam tape.  In the end, I added a bit of chalk to the tag to soften its edges.  Some of the girls did not secure the bird cage to the card which left it swinging which was also a nice effect.  It could then easily be removed and hung in a window or reused.  

Therese

First birthday card of the year!!

It has been weeks since I was in my craft room being crafty!!  I hope you all had a good Christmas season and are considering your creative goals for the season!! 
I am committed to making Christmas cards year round so will be working with my sister, Sylvia's challenge when I can.  You can check out her Christmas Card Challenge here on her blog. 
I will also be working on home projects this year as I have been putting them off for 3-4 years and they need doing.
I am continuing my special occassion cards for family and friends and my bimonthly cardmaking classes as well. 
On that note, here it the card I made today for my brother who has an early January birthday!!!  I used one of my serendipity backgrounds which was embossed with the Lattice Embossing folder (SU).  I stacked a gold layer with it and then die cut the HAPPY (SX) word from both of them.  I backed the holes with packing tape and inserted the gold letters and made sure to add back in the openings from the serendipity in the a and the p s.  I used my homemade stamping jig to get my "birthday" stamped exactly where I wanted it and then embossed with gold embossing powder.  I like the distressed look of it!!  I layered on a gauzy fiber below it and added a gold round paper clip to which I had tied some raffia using a single stitch of crochet thread.  I backed this layer with green cardstock strips and then distressed them before gluing this large element to a tan card front!! 
I have the gold layer with the serendipity letters still sitting on my desk and they will likely be my next card of the year!!
I hope you will find a way to be creative this coming year and will take the time to share it with those around you!  At every moment we have the opportunity to make a different choice and today is as good a time as any!! 

Therese

Birthday card for a retired carpenter

My Dad will soon be celebrating this 88th birthday and because he is a retired carpenter I like to include some wood on his card.  I am fortunate to have a woodworker in the house so little pieces of wood appear regularly with "Can you use this?"  Case in point, that is what happened this afternoon, as our son is here working on his walnut railing and a little scrap showed up!!  It was very thin so I backed it with packing tape before die cutting it with the Sizzix "Happy" die.  It worked perfectly!!  After working out just where I needed to stamp the "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" (SU) I used my LEGO stamping jig to get it exactly in the right place.  I stamped it over several times to get the depth of colour I was looking for - very easy to do with the stamp jig.  I inked the inside of my wood grain embossing folder and used it to "stamp" the background onto my cardstock.  The dye ink cleaned up very well from the inside of the folder.  I added a bit of black watercolour to the right hand sides of my wood word to just give it a bit of depth before using double sided tape to adhere it to my stamped background.  I added a little comma and an exclamation mark using a brown marker.  Next, I used my chevron punch (SU) to punch out a few chevrons below the greeting and one above.  I chose a dark maroon card which nicely highlighted the chevrons.  I used my tracing wheel to add some lines of texture to the outside edges of my background then glued it to the front of my card.  I watercoloured this laser printed tools image from Beccy's Place - http://beccysplace.blogspot.ca/ - then distressed the edges.  I added a bit of brown fiber to the back before adhering this focal element to the front of my card using 3D foam tape.  Pretty happy with how this card worked out!!  Fortunately, I will be able to hand it to my Dad personally as we will be celebrating as a family up home.                Therese

Custom card for a couple celebrating 65 years of marriage!

A friend asked me to make up a card for her Mom & Dad's 65 anniversary that included green and trees!!  Blue sapphire is the stone for 65 years so I incorporated that into my design as well.  I started with a large ivory card and added a layer of blue, brown and green decorative paper which incorporates musical notes.  I cut a middle panel which I embossed with a tree (Darice) on the top portion and stamped with a greeting in green on the bottom using my stampin jig to get it in just the right place.  In between I scored a couple of lines using my scoring tool from the back and added little squares with rhinestones in between.  I used one clear, two light blue and two darker blue rhinestones to bring in the "blue sapphire" theme.  The squares were cut from the bottom of the same page of decorative paper so coordinated sufficiently.  I trimmed the two little birds from a die cut that included a branch, wings and hearts.  I left their legs on and did not like the look so I trimmed them off and glued on the wings.  I set them in the tree both looking to the center.  I glued one of the little hearts into the crotch of the tree.  I wanted them to be subtle and am very happy with how it turned out!!!  I glued this focal central panel to my card front to finish off my card.  I have been brainstorming this card for a couple of weeks.  Sometimes it just takes that long for an idea to coalesce sufficiently to be able to create it!! 
Sixty five years of marriage is an achievement and I wish them every good thing as they celebrate their lives together. 

Therese

Hammered background for my sister's birthday card

I used one of my dandelion and radish leaves pounded backgrounds for this card for my sister's birthday. She loves sunflowers and it was as close as I could come at this time of the year!!  After the background was dry, I ironed it flat and trimmed it to 3.75" x 5". I added a length of yellow seam binding, layered it onto a coordinating green cardstock rectangle and stitched all the way around using green thread in my sewing machine.  I stamped the greeting just above the seam binding in dark green ink using my stamping jig.  I double stamped it to make sure it was dark enough to show up well.  I glued this large focal element to a bright yellow card front.  To simulate a bow I tied a short length of seam binding to the one on the front of my card using a single knot.  I love the way it turned out!!!  I will be seeing her later this week and we are headed out to do a bird photo shoot and enjoying lunch at a tea house.   One of her favorite things to do!!            Therese

A few more fabric collage cards

A few more cards that I made with the fabric collages I created a while back.  The collages were created by machine stitching together coordinating fabric scraps and then free hand cutting hearts from them.  

For the first card, I adhered two kraft cardstock strips to a piece of embossed (Swiss Dots) navy cardstock.  I added a layer of scallop edged kraft tulle (SU) adhering the ends to the back with double sided tape.  I positioned my fabric collage heart and machine stitched it in place using coordinating thread.  I added a scalloped heart punchie button which I tied on with kraft coloured embroidery thread knotted twice to keep the button in place.  I colour washed a laser printed greeting and mounted it to this layer using two tiny black brads.  This embellished layer was then adhered to a dark red card front to complete my card.  

For my second card, I stitched my fabric collage heart to an ivory layer and added a paper button tied on with black thread.  I used my stamping jig to stamp on the greeting (SU) in black in exactly the right place.  I layered this onto navy cardstock and machine stitched them together using navy thread.  This embellished layer was then adhered to a dark red card front.  

You can check out the other cards I made with my fabric collage hearts here.   

Therese

January cardmaking - Canadian Postage stamps

I love reusing and giving items a second chance!  In this case, I have utilized cancelled stamps which have in their first life accompanied a letter through the postal system.  I was going through my box of used stamps the other day and noticed a set of four stamps which featured mailboxes in each season.

They were all the same size which I thought would make them the perfect focal elements for a set of cards!! I chose cardstock which coordinated with each image cutting the card base from one and using the other to embossed this scrolled frame with a star theme.  I glued the embossed frame to the card front and then cut black rectangles to just fit into the center of the frame.

They perfectly held the postage stamp, the little note greeting which I embossed in white using my handmade stamping jig and a little coordinating ribbon flag which I stapled in place using a little gold staple.  I used 3D foam tape to secure these focal elements to the embossed layer on my card fronts.  I used Merry Christmas as a greeting with the winter postage stamps!!  All the stamps are so representative of Canada. The fall postage stamp features a tractor mail box, a yellow school bus and harvested grain fields of the western prairie. The spring one features an east coast light house and nautical mail boxes including one with a fish head.  The summer one features mail boxes shaped like a cottage, a church and a cow in a lush backdrop of the fertile fields found in the valleys of the Canadian Shield. The winter one features a chalet and a Canada Goose mail box with the Canadian Rockies in the background.  I love how these cards turned out!!
I made four of the Christmas cards which are being added to my stash. That makes my count - 13 so far!!

Therese

Chunky book page - copper wire owl

Joined a chunky book page swap with the theme of Copper and Wisdom.  I recently finished this owl card and thought that owl fit the theme and went looking on line for copper owls!  Wow!  There were a lot of fantastic copper owl designs so I made a few sketches and headed to my craft room!
I decided to use some heavy copper wire for the structure and lighter weight copper wire to tie the pieces together which is how some of the ones I found had been constructed.  I chose some black buttons for the eyes and started forming the structure for the owl's head.  I folded my wire hard to create the beak and then created a circle on each side to accommodate my buttons and finished off with the ends creating the pointy ears that most of them have.  That looked pretty good and the buttons fit inside them nicely.
One of the sketches I had made had a heart shaped body.  Being a bit partial to hearts I decided that mine would have a heart body too.  I made a hard corner in my wire and then curved the two ends into a heart shape and added a swirl on each end.  That would give me a good place to tie him together.  Some of the ones I had seen on line had large beads in their bodies but I decided on another heart for the middle of mine.  I created the heart the same way I had created the body - just made it a bit smaller and made sure it would fit inside the other one.
Using the light weight wire I started by securing the top of the head on one side, wired in the button for the eye and then wired the bottom of that space so the button would be in the right place.  Next, I wired the head piece to the body making sure that my beak was directly over the bottom of the large heart.  Wired the beak in place and then moved on to the other side of the body and wired the head to the body on that side.  I had to play with it a bit to get the second button to be in the right place in the loop but just a couple more loops was good enough.  I then wired the top of the head on that side.  Next, I wired the bottom of the body, added the little heart and wired it into the same section.  Moved on to the top side of the little heart where they met the body.  Looking good!!
After a bit of checking it out, I decided it needed piece that went from ear to ear and completed the top of his head so I wired that piece in.  That was much better!!
I added teal sequins in the eye sockets using glue dots and then added smaller copper ones over them. That finished off the eyes nicely.  I did have a 4x4 on my work surface as I worked to make sure that I did not create him too large for my page.  Once my owl was finished I used a hammer and flattened him out by tapping all the intersections of wire to ensure that my connections were tight and that the wire structures where laying next to each other.  I found this watercolour background paper in my stash, trimmed it and stitched it to my 4" x 4" of blue cardstock.  I decided to expand on the wisdom theme by stamping "be kind" on the lower left hand side. My handmade stamp positioner ensured that my words were exactly where I wanted them to be.    I attached my owl to my page by using large glue dots behind the eyes and ran wire around the middle of the little heart connection through the page several times.
I am super happy with how he worked out!!!  He will be off to my partner in tomorrow's mail.

Therese

My January Christmas cards!

I am setting the goal of making Christmas cards monthly again this year!!  I am following my sister, Sylvia's monthly Christmas Card challenge.
January's theme is embossing so I have incorporated both dry embossing and thermal embossing in my card.
I started by laser printing this Christmas rose and holly digital image from Beccy's Place.  I added the gold embossed greeting using my handmade stamping jig, watercoloured the images and glued them to a black layer.  I punched a slot (SU) on the top left hand side and strung a piece of red vintage seam binding through it.

I mounted it to a green embossed layer (CB-Swiss Dot) using 3D foam tape and adhered the ends of the seam binding to the back using double sided tape.  I then glued this element to a red card front.
Here is a look at my handmade stamping jig - I used Legos to make it!!  It works really well and I have put it in my tools drawer to be used next time I need to stamp an image in an exact location.
UPDATE:  For those who asked:  I have used a piece of vellum to stamp my greeting on and saved it in a envelope stored with my jig. You can also use a piece of acetate (transparency or packaging works well).  This method allows you to reuse the acetate if you use dye ink to stamp with as it will wipe right off the plastic.
I am submitting this card design to the following challenges:
Christmas cards all year round - anything goes
Sylvia's Christmas card challenge - embossing
Beccy's Place - any project with one of her images

It feels good to be back to cardmaking!!

Therese