Christmas cards!!!

It's with a sense of shock that I realise that Christmas will be well and truly over in just four months. To that end I'm trying to NOT have that last minute rush making my cards - and have made an early start. With a bit of luck this will reduce my panic sessions at the end ....maybe.

A card making friend of mine does wonderful things with the commercial Christmas cards that she receives - and of course that got this paper scrooge thinking this year. For some commercial cards it's almost criminal to throw them out. So to that end here are my first offerings from my commercial card stash.

  

I fell in love with the summer Santa image - well that's what we have here in Australia in December. The sand is a 'sand glitter', the ocean is a torn up calendar page and the sky chalked. The thong (flip flop) is in the wrong place and I only put in one because (a) I only had one left and (b) these things never get lost together! The seagull is the negative from a punch

The three Wise Men are cut, and embossed with a stylus then raised with pop dots. The three Christmas trees were just cut out and raised.

Thanks for stopping by

my latest card

Well it's been a while since I last posted ... but I do have a good excuse - two months in France! I have to admit I had an absolutely wonderful time and while there we met up with two sets of friends in Aix En Provence for a week. One lady had a birthday a couple of days after we returned to Oz and I was too jetlagged to be able to do anything for her in time. If you haven't had jetlag it's a bit like having the flu - SO not good.

Anyway today I've finished off a never ending card and put it in the mail for her. If you haven't heard of this it is simple as and has lots of sections for you to be able to decorate - really good for those milestone birthdays .. or if you want to surprise a friend.  Dawn gives the easiest explanation of the how to make this clever card.

Page one - stamping and rub ons.
Page two - the blank green is where my message went - although I didn't sign my name - secret squirrel! The wine glass is from the eyelet outlet ... a wonderful website that delivers very quickly anywhere in the 
world.

  Page three - memories of our travels and France

Page four - have to admit I was struggling to come with another idea. 

I've made one of these for a friend's 60th and this seems to work if you dedicate one 'page' to a part of each person's life. With a little preliminary planning these are very easy cards to make.

thanks for stopping by.

ps I've been playing with getting my image placements small enough to show them side by side so am currently on a learning curve - probably something that you shouldn't do in the middle of the night! Thanks to Na for your hint

Farewell cards

I've been meaning to post these but, as always, life gets busy. I do volunteer work at a military museum and we've had two lovely Canadian interns working with us for four months. Sadly their time came to an end and I was asked to make two different farewell cards that all the volunteers and staff could sign. Bit of a panic as I only had a day and a bit - and no inspiring thoughts for quite a while but here they are.

I coloured a scrap of mylar (sort of like OHT) with alcohol inks and overlaid it on a masked collage - problem was the white edges stood out a bit so I found some chalk and coloured the edges - if nothing else to beat them into submission (I think it worked). The butterfly and farewell are both cuttlebug dies while the oval is a spellbinders.

I hadn't worked with this intern quite as much so had to have a bit of a guess as to what she might like. The flower is a spellbinders rose and the background paper was a RAK from a friend. 

Thanks for looking  

backgrounds

I had a brain wave today - well you have to do something to take your mind off your very close visit to the dentist's chair! I was reading a magazine in the waiting room and in one article the 'subject' was saying that she loves her sewing and will sew/embroider anything using her sewing machine.... having just spent quite a few days at my machine - and ending up with an agonised back my first thought was no Jose!


But then I had one of those K-ching moments. Having survived my dental chair time it was back home and dragging out my green 'I'll do something with it one day' pile of scraps. And this is the result. Where it looks grey and green - it's actually shades of moss green. The dark green triangle is where the white background showed through. Maybe next time I'll make the X's smaller (I used a template here) 

Went to throw out all my scrap cutoffs and went nope - just keep going. I dug out a scrap of Jac paper and just started splotching scraps down where it 'looked' like they should be, and poured over ultrafine copper glitter. And bingo there you have it

ATC swap

Well after quite a few years I have finally bitten the 'bullet' and joined in my group's ATC swap this year.  Rather than two identical ATCs going to two different partners it is a series of two ATCs going to the one person. And while it does have me scratching my head I am enjoying the challenge. I still have a long way to go to catch up to some of the girls who do amazing work.


Here is my take on a stamped/collaged theme that recently arrived at my partner's letterbox.

The back ground is Asian themed and all the stamped components were RAK'd to me some years ago - sadly I don't use them often enough. The men are stamped onto the background, then onto lighter coloured Asian paper (I got a gorgeous stack from Fox Collection). I then heat embossed the red stamp and the coins are simply stickers. I had originally intended the two men to face each other but think this works better. I call them the judge and the thief.

My next ATC challenge is a shaped one. Scary!

using scraps

I have just finished my colour combo for my March swap. It gave me some grief at first being orange, green and brown - but I have just joined TechniqueJunkies and promptly went on technique overload after checking out their site. In the end I must have seen a picture ...somewhere - and came up with the end product - and I can't show it until my partner has it - sorry. I had pulled out my cuttlebug funky circle frame 37-1155 that rarely sees the light of day and simply went to town. My end product looks a bit different to these but if you have scraps or the funky circle frame it's an idea. I ended up with bits and pieces and decided that while I was surrounded by lots of sticky bits of orange and green of various hues it would be a good time to make up a couple of backgrounds. 

 I think the bottom one is still a WIP but the top one is ready to go onto a card that might suit it

fund raising cards

I support a couple of charities by making cards and sending to them to use however suits them best. One uses it as a fund raiser, while the other gives it to farmers in drought - guess when things are tough going buying greeting cards goes down in terms of importance.

Anyway my yoga instructor is hoping to get a raffle together to support Shave_for_a_Cure_Day and was looking for donations. I have offered a packet of hand made greeting cards and am  happily getting some together. I thought I would share this baby card that I've just finished making two of. It's quick to make - and I have another four 'babies' in reserve. The baby is a Cuttlebug die 37-1160 - must admit the flower bit gets a heavy work out for all those really small bits of leftover cardstock. The blue backing is a spellbinders Fleur_De-Lis that I don't use often enough, while the green paper has been sitting in my stash for some time. He looks like he's got food smeared over his chine but that's not in reality.

Hope this give you ideas for cards - not just baby cards

Julie

Backgrounds

I have been playing with stamped/collage backgrounds - not really my thing but I have a couple of swaps coming up. One site I looked at said just get your old bits and glue them on whichever way you feel like. Did that but wasn't overly impressed with my results. 

Showed the scan to a stamping friend and she went oh wow - use your image manipulation program and showed me a couple she had played with (NICE is all I say). So I used my image program  - in my case GIMP - it's free BTW. and here are my varied plays on the above scan.

Lightened - with shadows removed

Blurred

Smudged - fun! I got in touch with the 'inner child'

Pixelated - had a great time with this one - LOTS of different ways to play

And of course Sepia with edges feathered

Next to see what this looks like if I print one of them on canvas paper - question is which one should I print?

Try this - it definitely is fun!