Cardz TV Gallery-My annual Christmas card

Well, here it is---the finalist for my annual Christmas card. I made 35 of these to send to friends and family. They were a little more involved than what I usually send out because the pieces had to be stamped, die cut and colored but I'm so in love with this Lawn Fawn Joy to the Woods stamp and die set. My favorite part of the stamp set are the paw prints to stamp behind the fox. Aren't they adorable?
I thought this scene was perfect for the sentiment from the Cardz TV Stamp Set "Christmas Critter Captions". I used a cloud speech bubble die from My Creative Time and the cute little Santa hat is another die from My Creative Time as well as an edge die for the snow hill.

I made a base card from white cardstock in standard A2 size (4 1/4" x 5 1/2") then added a medium blue cardstock mat. Then I built my scene by adding the birch trees on each side and adding a cardinal and a treehouse to the trees. Next I added some snow to the bottom of the card. I originally was going to put glitter on each snow hill as seen in this photo, but to streamline the mass production a little more I left it off of the rest of my cards. I added the cute little fox then placed the paw prints behind him in the snow. Finally, I stamped the sentiment on the the speech bubble cloud with Momento Black Tuxedo ink and attached it to the card front. Whew, one holiday season chore all done! The cards will be ready to mail after I get some holiday stamps from the post office.

Thanks for stopping by today.

My Creative Time Challenge

Today I have a Christmas card that I created for the current challenge at My Creative Time. This is a photo/color inspiration challenge using this photo.

 I wanted to create a poinsettia for the front of my card so I used the dies from the Boughs of Holly stamp and die set. I cut ten petals from cranberry colored cardstock and three in a bright green cardstock then layered them all together to make a flower. For my sentiment I used the Stitched Rectangular Frame Dies and More set to make the frame to stamp my sentiment on. The sentiment is also from the Boughs of Holly stamp set and I heat embossed it with Versa Mark ink and Wow gold glitter embossing powder.

The Cutting Cafe Thanksgiving card

I love this little Turkey Shaped card and template from The Cutting Cafe. This week Regina assigned a Thanksgiving theme for the Design Team. I made this little guy to send off to one of my granddaughters. Isn't he so cute? I used a really old DCWV holiday mat stack for the layers of this little guy. Again, even though Regina's cutting files come in lots of different formats for all the cutting machines out there, I chose to print it out in PDF form and hand cut it. It is really a breeze to put together. After I had him all assembled I added some googly eyes, a little doodling with my white gel pen and a sentiment tied on with twine.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you celebrate the holiday. If not, it's always a good thing to give thanks for all the blessings in your life.

Online Card Class Day 5 Gift Tags

Today's class at Online Card Classes Holiday 2014 was making tags in varying degrees of difficulty. Tag one (one left) was made very simply with two tags cut from white and die cutting a snowflake in the center of the top layer. I stamped the words to and from and then added some twine at the top and a few gems. Tag number two is also two layers with the top layer white and the bottom layer a patterned paper. I cut an ornament (My Creative Time) on the top layer, attached the patterned layer behind it, added a sentiment (My Creative Time) and then a twine bow and twine at the top. Easy peasy! The last card has a shaker element to it. Again two layers, die cut the tree from the top layer and added acetate behind it, added foam tape, sequins and glitter then attached it to the back layer. To finish this one off I stamped some snowflakes around the tree and added a narrow green ribbon to the top.

Online Card Class Day 4 One Layer Cards

Hello my crafty friends! First, I must admit that I skipped over Day 3 of the Online Card Class Holiday 2014 lesson. That class was on watercoloring and I confess, I am not a big fan of watercoloring. I don't really see a reason to take time to do a technique that I really don't enjoy. So instead I made two cards to share from Day 4's class. My first card is a double die cutting technique. I used a stitched circle die and an adorable little reindeer die from My Creative Time. The first step of the process was placing the circle die on the card front then putting the deer die over it and marking the spot where the two dies met with a little pencil mark. Then I partial cut the circle by placing the part of the die I didn't want cut laying off the edge of the cutting plate. After that was done (I ruined several before I got it right) I put the reindeer in place matching him up to those pencil marks and cut the second time using the same technique with the deer hanging over the edge of the cutting plate. The end result is the reindeer sticking up out of the bottom edge of the die cut circle. Again, as in Day 2, this is not a card I would mass produce because it is quite a difficult process lining the dies up and partially cutting. For the inside of the card I used a little bigger circle than the one on the front to make a stencil from acetate. After the stencil was cut I placed it, making sure it was completely under the front card circle and then I stenciled it in using Tim Holtz Tumbled Glass distress ink. For the finishing touch I heat embossed some red snowflakes on the front and added the sentiment to the inside inked circle, and added some Glossing Accents to the reindeer's nose.

My second card was really simple and this would be one that would be easy to mass produce. I simply speckled some Heidi Swapp Gold mist on the front of the card, die cut the word and reindeer from My Creative Time dies, then added a thin strip of gold glitter paper on the lower portion of the card. The paper that I used for this is made by Cosmo Cricket and it has adhesive on the back so I didn't even have to get adhesive out to complete this card. It was done in minutes.

Online Card Class Day 2 Interactive Cards

Today's Online Card Class was making Interactive Cards. I made a shaker card. This is definitely not a card I would mass produce because it is very time consuming, but I know my two granddaughters will get a kick out of it. I used the Lawn Fawn Joy to the Woods stamps with coordinating dies to create my little scene. The first thing I did was stamp and cut all the elements for my scene and make the frame using Stitched Rectangular dies from My Creative Time. I made the snow banks with an edge die from My Creative Time. My favorite part of this stamp set is the little fox's foot prints to stamp behind the fox. How cute is that? All my coloring was done with Copics. I assembled all the pieces on the front of the card and then put acetate on the back side. Then I added foam tape all around the edges and placed my sequins, seed beads and a little glitter between the foam tape. For my inner layer I decided to heat emboss some snowflakes in white on vellum before attaching the front of the card. I love how this card came out and especially the shaker element, but I would only go through the process to make a card for someone very special.

Online Card Class Easy to Duplicate cards

I really love learning new techniques for creating cards from Online Card Classes. This time around it's the Holiday Card Class 2014. For Day One the subject was Easy to Duplicate cards. For my first card I created the base of the card from kraft card stock. The card front is created with navy blue cardstock inked up with Tim Holtz Black Soot ink to create the night sky. When it was dry I heat embossed the "let it SNOW" sentiment from My Creative Time with WOW white embossing powder. When it was dry I added some "snow" on the sky with a stencil and embossing paste. To finish it off the right top edge is rounded and a twine bow was the last step.

My second card is a Christmas tree made with "Word Art". You can see how I made this card in my post HERE. This was really fun and once you get the stamps all set up on a stamp press you can easily stamp a bunch of them.

My third card is my favorite and I think I may use it for my annual mass production of cards. This card was definitely the most time consuming but once everything is cut it can be set up in assembly line. fashion. I did some heat embossing with Versamark ink and WOW silver embossing powder. For the first layer of the card I inked up all around the edges and then dipped it in the silver embossing powder to get the glittery edge. Then I added a few splotches of silver. The tag was cut with a die from My Creative Time and the bottom third was heat embossed with the same silver embossing powder. Next I added a diecut snowflake made from an Echo Park die. I diecut a small circle and heat embossed a snowflake pattern in the center with white embossing paste then inked it up with Tim Holtz Tumbled Glass distress ink. For the last step on the tag I added a little silver cording. The last two steps were adding the die "Merry" (a My Creative Time die) and the vellum banner with silver embossed "Christmas" (also My Creative Time die and stamp).

That's it for today. Thanks for stopping by.

Word Art Christmas card

There's a popular trend I've been seeing a lot lately on blogs and Pinterest. It's making shapes into word art with stamps. I decided to try my hand at the technique after participating in Online Card Classes 2104 Holiday card event. This is an easy card to mass produce once you get the stamps set out in the pattern. There are a few steps to accomplish this. First I cut a basic triangle shape for the tree pattern using my paper cutter and scrap paper. My tree is four inches tall and three inches wide. Next I taped this pattern onto a piece of acetate and placed it on my work surface with the paper facing down and the acetate on top. Then I started laying out my stamps (with the stamping side face down and the smooth side facing up). This is the hardest part of the project, getting the stamps all lined up and finding just the perfect size stamp for the space. I used the Cardz TV Stamp sets "Snow Day", "Holly Jolly", "Very Merry" and "Home for Christmas". I should mention that when you place the stamps onto the acetate there is a little stickiness to them that keeps them from moving around. It would be a much more difficult process if you didn't use the acetate. After I had them all in place on the acetate I used my Fiskars stamp press to pick them all up. If you wanted to you could do some masking and use different ink colors for different sentiments. Since this may be the card I use to mass produce my Christmas card I wanted it to be a simple process. I used Momento ink in the color called "Cottage Ivy". I stamped it onto my cardstock and then used a rectangular stitched metal die from My Creative Time to cut it for the top of my red base card. I made a stencil for the tree trunk with a piece of acetate that I just hand cut into a trunk shape and with my Tim Holtz circular inking tool and Distress ink in Gathered Twig stenciled under the tree. For a finishing touch I added a gold foil star, also cut from a My Creative Time die, and embellished with red Stickles and red sequins. I thought this was a really fun technique and I think I'll do an ornament shape next. I hope I've inspired you to give this a try. Have a fun and crafty day! Thanks for stopping by.