Christmas Cards 2018

Christmas cards are one of the occasions that I love to create cards for. 

I've downsized my card list considerably. I used to attempt to make every card I sent out different. This year I decided to do something different for me. I created a small amount of one card design and then moved on to another design. 

I created these wreaths but changed up the background paper for each card. I didn't purchase any new Christmas cardstock this year. I just used what I had on hand. All of the cards shown below with the exception of the snowflake cards use Tim Holtz Idea-ology Paper Stash Tidings cardstock. I've had it for awhile and I love it. It's pretty much used up. I'll have to see if I can find another pad of it or see what other Christmas cardstock Tim Holtz has available. I love his products because they are so vintage. 

For my wreaths I die cut circles using the Double Stitched Circles from Our Daily Bread. All of the greenery was die cut using Sizzix Thinlits products. I used Tim Holtz Alterations Retro Merry Christmas, Holiday Words: Script - Christmas and Garden Greens. I used some miscellaneous poinsettia's that I picked up last year at Hobby Lobby. 

I did make my own poinsettia's using a Sizzix die. After I had them all together and I had sprinkled some Papericious Frosting Powder on them, I didn't like them. I just set them aside for another project. 

I used glitter cardstock for the sentiments. 

After the wreaths had been assembled I splattered them with Perfect Pearls. This card was my favorite!

For the next card I used the same paper. 

I heat embossed the sentiments using Hero Arts Gold and Silver embossing powder. 

All of the sentiments are from the Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Mini Doodle Greetings stamp set.

I bought this set and the larger set last year and this is the first time I've used them!

I added a strip of Tim Holtz Idea-ology gold deco tape to each card. 

For the greenery on my cards I used Concord and 9th's Take A Bough Die. 

I used Rangers Tim Holtz Distress collage medium that I spread on with a brush and then sprinkled on frosting powder from Papericious. I first saw this stuff at a stamp show I went to this past summer at the Heartfelt Creations booth. The poinsettia is from Hobby Lobby. 

This card again uses the same paper as the two cards shown above.

For the sentiment I diecut Merry Christmas using the Sizzix Tim Holtz Alterations Retro Christmas die. The greenery is Holiday Greens and Garden Greenery. The same dies I used above on the wreath card. For both cards I added Ranger Ruby Red Liquid Pearls to the Kraft colored cardstock. I again spritzed perfect pearls over the greenery. 

For my snowflake cards I heat embossed snowflakes using the Simon Says Stamp Lots of Snowflakes stamp set. I stamped them with Distress Oxide ink in evergreen bough and then used Hero Arts clear embossing powder. 

I cut a strip of patterned cardstock from a paper pad by The Paper Studio called Old World Winter.

I added a strip of Tim Holtz Idea-ology gold deco tape.

The stamp and die are from WPlus9 called Hand Lettered Holiday. 

I cut three Merry die cuts. Using one I added VersaMark several times and kept heat embossing it with Hero Arts gold embossing powder until I was satisfied with how it looked. I then adhered three die cuts together. I then stamped the Christmas sentiment and heat embossed it with gold embossing powder. 

I happened to be up in Plymouth last Saturday so I popped into Anchor Paper.

I found this die from Hero Arts called Snowflakes & Ornaments Fancy Die. 

There's another piece to the die so that you can make the snowflake look like an ornament.

I chose not to use that piece for this card. 

I watercolored two pieces of cardstock. One with Distress ink in candied apple and one in mowed lawn for each card. I die cut the circle snowflake out of the candied apple cardstock and then adhered it to the mowed lawn cardstock. 

I then die cut three circles for each card using white cardstock and the double stitched circles die from Our Daily Bread. After adhering them together I added them to the front of the card piece around the snowflakes.

I added a few silver sequins to the front of each card and they were done!

I still have a few cards that I'm working on but this is the majority of the cards I made this year. 

I'll post any others I send out in another post. 

Thanks for taking the time to stop by!

The Flower Challenge #24 'Anything Goes'

The Flower Challenge #24 'Anything Goes'

Today I'm sharing a card I created for The Flower Challenge. 

The flower stamp is from Rubbernecker Stamps. It's called Daisy Daydream. I googled daisies so I could see all the different colors that daisies come in. I decided to go with blue with a green center. 

I'm always so mesmerized when I go to a stamp show and stop at the Rubbernecker booth. I love watching the guy that does demos. He makes it look so easy. He always uses Ken Oliver's color burst powders. I don't have those, I have the Brusho Crystal Colors. I do like them, I just forget to pull the out and play with them. 

I used Distress Oxide inks for my watercolor. The colors I used were mowed lawn and blueprint sketch.  I used VersaFine onyx black for the sentiment. The sentiment is from the Flower Turnabout stamp by Concord & 9th. 

Thanks for taking the time to stop by!

Color Throwdown Challenge CTD505

 

I'm participating in the Color Throwdown Challenge this week!

I do like this color combination.

 

The sentiment on the card is from the Flower Turnabout Stamp Set from Concord & 9th.

I used the Double Stitched Circle die on this card and the one below from Our Daily Bread Designs. 

 

 

 

Distress oxide inks were used to watercolor some mixed media paper.

I pulled out an older Sizzix Tim Holtz Alterations Frameworks die for my background.

The greenery was die cut using Sizzix Tim Holtz Garden Greens. 

 

Since I have extra die cut pieces and greenery I decided to make a second card.

I set aside the rest of my pieces to create more cards later. 

 

The sentiment on this card is from the Wreath Builder Set from Gina K Designs.

 

Be sure to stop by the Color Throwdown Blog to check out all the cards that their Design Team created and all the entries from the challenge!

Thanks for stopping by!

Floral Cards

It's been a few months since I've posted anything on my blog.  I had this crazy idea that I was going to purge my craft room and then I was going to do the same to all the rooms in my house. Well, my project started out gangbusters but petered out just as quickly. I also told myself I couldn't craft until it was finished. Ha! 

If I had time to just work on my purging project without interruptions I probably would have finished it by now. Too many things get in the way and I've found I only have time to work on it in chunks. I don't get much done during the week. I'm just too exhausted when I get home from work and going through things is the last thing that I want to do! 

So, I just decided enough is enough and I miss crafting. It's my therapy and helps keep me sane. I'm just going to craft and slowly work on my project in between craft projects. Someday I'll get it finished. 

For my card projects, I watercolored some flowers last night and let them dry naturally until I could die cut them tonight when I got home from work. I used distress oxide inks and Zig clean color brush markers for my color. The stamp and die set is one of my favorites from Gina K called Painted Autumn. I just love this set! I did some stenciling for the backgrounds. The stenciling on the card below is very subtle and on the card above the stenciling stands out more. I'll list the product names below. 

I'm not sure where the stencil for the card below comes from, but I think it's from Stampin' Up. I didn't pay attention to the names of the ink colors I used, I just played around until I found three colors for each card that I liked together. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Products used:

Enamel Dots

Sparkling Clear Droplets

Sentiments from: Concord & 9th - Dahlia Turnabout Stamp set & Gina K Designs Wreath Builder set

Flowers: Gina K Designs: Painted Autumn Stamp & Die set

Oxide Inks

Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers 

Stencils - Tim Holtz