Snowmen holiday cards

Two more simple cards for my holiday card bin, using these cute snowmen papers from My Mind's Eye:

 I have a real love of non-traditional colours for Christmas cards, which means you'll often see a blue or green snowflake on my projects!  Once again, I let the patterned paper shine, and added a few snowflake and greenery die cuts.

Freshly Made Sketches #400

So happy to use the final sketch for the Freshly Made Sketches #400 celebration!  And even better, I made a Christmas card to add to my stash:

I bought two sheets of these Colourful Christmas papers from My Mind's Eye during a Christmas in July sale, and thought they'd work perfectly with the sketch.  I used my sewing machine to stitch the snowman panel onto a grey mat, and zigzagged the polka dot paper onto my card base.  A few colourful snowflakes & some bubble gems and it's done.  Congrats to FMS!  Love this challenge blog.

Christmas Wonder

 I have the last of my Ai Christmas cards to share with you today - two cards using the lovely Christmas Wonder Set (Sku #4936) from Art Impressions:

  I kept both of these images to a fairly neutral palette - other than red & green, I used just the Copic Warm Greys & a hint of gold.

For this card, I fussy cut out the lamp post and the tree, and popped both of them and the sentiment up with pop dots.  Happy stamping!

Copics used: Greys - W7, W5, W3, W1, W00

Reds - R37, R35, R32, R30, R59

Greens - G46, G43, G40

Skin/hair - E11, E00, E000, R30, Y26, Y23, E50, E55, E53, E51, E47, E44, E43

Santa Paws

 I'm pretty sure that this is going to be everyone's favourite Ai Christmas stamp set this year... Here are a trio of cards using the very fun Santa Paws set (Sku #4937):

What's not to love about puppies dressed up for the holidays??

The images are all coloured with Copic markers and then I let my love of patterned papers do the rest.

I actually started this post with just the first two cards... but love the pups so much, that I've added these last two before the post went live!

Hope your holiday card making is going well!

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Holiday Watercolour Cards

 I have several different cards to share today using a variety of the Art Impressions Watercolor stamp sets.  I was so excited when the WC Fir Trees Set (Sku #4960) debuted in the summer, and was very keen to try using it for Christmas greenery. I really love the results! 

 I started out with my watercolour paper and Marvy markers, and used the No. 4 paintbrush that is available in the Ai store.  For the urn, I used WC Ornate Container Set (Sku #4890) and my Brownish Grey Marvy marker.  I intentionally didn't colour the top edge of the container, as I knew that I wanted the foliage to be spilling over the edge.  Using my Jungle Green Marvy marker, I inked up four of the branch stamps, stamping the lower branches first, and filling in upwards.  I left a space in the center, and inked up one of the branches from WC Branches Set (Sku #4964) with my English Red Marvy marker (these are Red Dogwood branches!!).  I then used the brush end of my Marvy marker to hand draw in the pinecones by using a dabbing motion in a pinecone shape.  I used the fine end of the marker to add some shadows to the twigs:

 I used just two stamps from the set to make my wreath, and you can either draw a faint circle with a pencil to use as a guide, or do what I did, and stamp a branch on the top, bottom and on each side - forming a square shape.  Then continue stamping in between, shaping it into a circle.  I occasionally double stamped without re-inking, which gives a bit of depth to the wreath, by having some lighter toned sprigs.  I didn't fill in every white area, as that left me with spots to add in berries that I drew in directly with my red marker.  I also hand drew the bow in before there were too many sprigs around it.  I use a very light touch with my damp paintbrush, as I like to see some of the definition of the pine needles.

I was so happy with how these turned out, that I've made multiples to send as my Christmas cards.

New Mini Try-folds at Art Impressions

More new Ai!  The Art Impressions design team are all showing off the two newly released Mini Try-fold sets available on the Ai website - I am sharing Celebrate Spring MTF (Sku #4849):

 These little sets are designed for a card with three layers.  The outside image also includes a tiny door die, that scores along the hinged edge so that the door opens, and you can see through to the other layers.

 Here is the middle layer, and again the set includes the die that fits right in the middle of the scene.

 And finally, here is the inner image!  It's hard to capture how cute these cards are in photos - they're quite amazing in person.  You can see all of the Art Impressions Mini TF's here.

Copics used: Greens - YG67, YG63, YG61, YG03, YG01, YG00

Blues - BG075, BG072, BG070

Pinks - RV14, RV13 RV11, R32, R35

Greys - C3, C1

Browns - E57, E55, E53, E51

Golds - Y26, Y23, E50

Coffee Lover's Card #3

And my final effort for the Winter Coffee Lover's Blog Hop!  Another Verve digi sentiment, and cup from Verve's Holiday Treats:

Patterned papers are Comfort & Joy, My Mind's Eye; Verve Holiday Cheer digi set & Holiday Treats stamp set; Cardstock is White Daisy & Garden Green, Close To My Heart; Let It Snowflake die, MFT; Spellbinders Oval die.

Mojo Monday #473

Mojo Monday has a great sketch to use for Christmas cards this week, so I pulled out some Ai penguins that I had coloured a few weeks ago, and made up two of these little guys:

Patterned paper is Comfort & Joy by My Mind's Eye; Cardstock is New England Ivy & Black by CTMH; Stamp sets are Glad Tidings by Verve & Art Impressions; Snowflakes are Let It Snowflake by My Favorite Things and Snowflake Dies by Art Impressions; Copic Markers.

Art Impressions Christmas

The Art Impressions design team are helping to launch four new clear acrylic Christmas stamp sets today on the Ai blog - and they are such cute, fun themed sets - you're going to want to get all of them!  I am featuring Dairy Christmas Set (Sku #4789), which includes four images and five fun sentiments:

 We are also partnering this week with Therm O Web - and I've used their wonderful gold Deco Foil and Deco Foam adhesive to create the glimmery gold snowflakes and stripes on my cards.

This was SO easy, and the results were amazing.  *Check out my last post on Tuesday, Nov.1st to see how I made my snowflakes! Here are closeups of each of my cards:

 Our current challenge on the Ai blog is "Prep for Christmas"!  We want to see your holiday creations, so head on over to link up your projects - there are always wonderful prizes to be won!

Crop Til You Drop

 Most of us have loaded up our craft supplies and headed off to Crop our little hearts out with our girlfriends at one time or another... and I have the perfect image from Art Impressions for you to use on a card for one of those friends!  Here is Small Cropper (Sku #4094):

 Isn't she great??  I used some pretty background papers, and jazzed her up with a printed flower and a few buttons that I stitched and stuck down with adhesive dots.  I softened the edges by sponging all the papers with a soft caramel colour of ink.

 Copic colours used: E31, E34, E37, E18, E07, E02, R27, R24, R22, R20, Y26, Y23, YG95, YG93, YG91, BG75, BG74, BG71, W1, W00.

Happy stamping!

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