Get Well

Christmas crafty bits stowed away now but not too far, just in case I ned any more cards for this year.  This time I've made a Get Well card, hoping I don't actually need to send it of course.  I've used a lovely free die of a good size which came as a magazine gift.  Started by die cutting two circles, one cream and one light blue.  The die was then placed partially over the cream circle and cut, then placed in the same way on the opposite side of the circle.  These cuts were then placed onto the blue circle but not yet glued so that I could work out where to place the sentiment on the two oval die cuts.  Glued the sentiment in place first and then the two floral partial die cuts so that they slightly overlapped the ovals and lined up with the edges of the circle. This was then layered onto a slightly larger darker blue circle. A square of cream card was then embossed and placed onto a darker blue square before the whole thing was assembled as a card.

Lilies die - free with an issue of Die Cutting Essentials magazine
Sentiment - Stampin' Up stamp from way back
Ovals - stitched shape dies from Stampin' Up
Circles and Squares - dies from my collection

Curvy Birthday

 I can post this card here because I know it has been received by the friend it was sent to.  I've used stamps and dies from a matching set recently acquired  Images were coloured using alcohol pens.  Not much more to say about this really as it more or less speaks for itself. It was fun working out different ways of using these stamps and dies, a useful addition to my stash.

Birds and Flowers - Quite Curvy stamp set Stampin' Up
Card layers - Curvy matching die set Stampin' Up
Sentiment - from my favourite magazine freebie set from way back
Colouring - using Copic pens
Ovals - Stitched nesting shapes Stampin' Up (retired I think)

Ikebana

A bit of light relief today with some Japanese flower arranging but using oddments of card which has to be much easier than doing the real thing - I'm not particularly good with flowers!  I die cut the container, branch and tiny flowers using various scraps of card then arranged them onto a cream label shape which had a toning layer behind..  I then remembered that I had a bamboo embossing folder which hadn't seen the light of day since Oriental cards were all the rage - some years back.  Stamped the sentiment onto another scrap of cream card, found some designer paper and assembled everything. I've still not stowed away all the Christmas crafty items which is what I really intended when I went into the craft room - easily side-tracked  that's me 😊😊  Seeing this on the screen I feel it probably needs something in the top right area, will have a ponder on that.

Dies - Ikebana set from Sizzix, designed by Pete Hughes
Embossing Folder - Bamboo by Cuttlebug
Sentiment - from my favourite magazine freebie stamp set from a while ago
Label dies - an old Spellbinders set
Background - Tonic dies

Seasonal Cards

 I think I should call a halt on making Christmas cards because I seem to have amassed quite a few more than I will be needing this year although I've not yet shared them all so you might still see some of them.  I'm aiming on having a general tidy up of my work space which will include packing all the seasonal bits and pieces back into their boxes.  The share for today is one using a large stamp from a set which came to light during one of my sorting out sessions and sad to say I'd completely forgotten about them and haven't used any of the stamps for some time until recently.  Once stamped and embossed this is quite a quick card to put together with some designer paper or card for the layers and of course the overall look could be altered dependent on the choice of embossing powders.  This one was embossed with gold onto cream card, layered onto red.  Minimal colouring is required and the stamp nicely fills a 6" card.

Stamp - from Fat Robin collection Chocolate Baroque (card is 6" square).

Christmas Wreath

 As I've mentioned previously reading blogs can lead me into temptation and it has happened again when I read this post from the lovely Jules HERE but this wasn't an expensive buy because the digital files mentioned were at a special price.  I downloaded them and once I'd eventually managed to open one of them using Craft Artist (with some helpful advice from Jules) I worked with it changing the colour of the wreath and then adding a sentiment and also flowers and a bow from some of my CA Digikits.  The file was saved and I printed a copy which was then die cut and layered up  to make this quick and easy card which could be good for batch making.  Looking a bit dark and wet outside this morning so I guess a morning tinkering with Craft Artist might be a good idea - not used it for a while so I need to remind myself of just what can be done with this programme which is sadly no longer available.

Wreath - Huckleberry Hearts "Wreath Clipart"   - one of eight designs
Flowers and Bow - from CA digi kits.
Layers - dies by Tonic and Phill Martin

More Seasonal Houses

 I have another seasonal house card to share today, this time using a snow globe die to contain the scene. Two of the snow globes were die cut, one with the 'hole' in the centre and the other without as a backing.  I carefully trimmed off the fancy edge from the backing one before building up the scene using scraps of patterned paper and white card and also green card for the trees, finally layering the two globes together..  The houses were fussy cut from the design paper, as was the greeting.  Background paper also came from the same set of design paper.

Design Paper - Trimming the Town from Stampin' Up
Snow Globe - dies from Crealies
Blue Sky - scrap of printed paper from Artylicious Season's Greetings CD
White layers - dies from Crafter's Companion and My Favourite Things
Trees - green trees - using dies from various sets.

Snippets Challenge #391

 Time for another visit to Pixie's Crafty Workshop and today I have another Christmas card for the current challenge.  I started by cutting the wreath from a snippet of green card and - call me mad if you like - added the red berries using the 'waste' saved from a rectangle die which has holes all around the edge.  As soon as they fell out I thought 'holly berries' and promptly gathered them up and popped into a little self-seal plastic bag for safe keeping.  A white circle was cut from another scrap, the sentiment stamped in the centre and the circle embossed before adding it to another larger circle (also from the snippets pile).  The birds were stamped on another white scrap, coloured and die cut; the bow was stamped onto gold - yet another small scrap and punched out.  I then found some larger snippets of seasonal paper and cut two curvy borders to go either side of the central green piece which wasn't large enough for the whole card.  Everything was layered onto a gold die cut background and that's it - a Christmas snippets card for the challenge.

Wreath - die from Tonic
Berries - 'waste' from another die
Bow - stamped and punched using retired Stampin' Up punch
Curvy Borders - Curvy die set from Stampin' Up
Robins - Birds from Curvy stamp set Stampin Up
Design Paper - retired Christmas papers Stampin' Up