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Posts Tagged ‘Handmade Christmas Cards’
A Fun CASE for a Baby Card!
Aloha, all!
I had a blast yesterday with the project I'm showing off today. I'm a member of a Toastmasters club where one of our members is expecting a baby soon, and she made the point that this baby is going to be born in the Year of the Dragon, "the mightiest of the signs in the Chinese Zodiac!"
Well, a baby is hardly a "mighty" being, babies being more on the "cute" side. Nonetheless, the members of the club asked that I make a card for a party that they had today that somehow featured a dragon to go with the club's gift. Not being the punch-art creative type, I went off looking for a dragon to CASE. It didn't take long to find a video by Tami White and the cutest dragon you EVER saw! I knew immediately that this would be my inspiration, and all I had to do was figure out my colors and how to deal with a few punches that had retired since the video was made over a year ago.
When I was making the card, I had no idea (still don't have) whether the baby is a girl or a boy. I thought a combination of Pink and Blue would work just fine and started punching. You'll find the complete instructions on Tami's video, but I'll include some supplemental information about changes that I made.
The first change that I had to make was to use the Sizzix Stars #2 die (sold by Stampin' Up!) instead of the Star Punch (now retired) for the "horns" and back scales. Tami had used the smallest oval die (retired) for the teeth or fangs, and I substituted the smallest image from the Boho Blossoms Punch. Otherwise, I used her instructions. OK, so mine's not put together quite as perfectly as hers; but he's still "stinkin' cute."
The colors for this cute guy are Marina Mist and Regal Rose, along with some Basic Black accents. My card is also an unusual size – we needed plenty of room for lots of people to sign their best wishes, so I made a card that's 5-1/2" wide by 8-1/2" high. For the sentiment, I used a stamp from the stamp set, Curly Cute. Aha, there's that word – "cute"! I knew I'd find that in the Stampin' Up! product line somewhere!! I also used the last of my stash of Marina Mist Brads from the Subtles collection of brads.
And as I love to do, I tied everything together with some fab Stampin' Up! ribbon, this time the Marina Mist 1/2" Scallop Dots Ribbon.
I can't imagine that you could have as much fun with what you're doing as I did making this little guy. But be sure to try to have lots of fun anyway with whatever you're doing!
Subscribe to the comments for this postHello, Baby! Or is that “Aloha, Baby!
Aloha, all!
I may have mentioned that I'm going to become a Great Aunt to two babies this spring. Next month one nephew will be welcoming a baby boy, and in June – for the first time in decades! – my side of the family, courtesy of another nephew and his wife, will be welcoming a baby girl! My niece, Margie, who is a 30-something, has been the only girl baby in our family since the day she was born. She indicates that she is more than ready to give up that honor.
So I'd better start shifting into "pink" mode for some of my cards and projects! I have plenty of blue stuff in storage, and now I need to get cracking to welcome a baby girl. She may not want pink down the road a bit. But for now, this Great Aunt will be making pink!
The paper with those darling little birds is from the Designer Series Paper set, Nursery Nest. I cut it with the Circle Scissors Plus, and mounted it on a card made with the Scallop Circle Bigz Die. But before I did, I attached a piece of the Blushing Bride 3/8" Pleated Satin Ribbon behind it. This ribbon does so well going around corners! I love it for a lot of its characteristics, but I think this is my favorite.
To set off the greeting (from Teeny Tiny Wishes), I included a Scallop Circle punched with the 2-3/8" Scallop Circle Punch, which I then embossed with the Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder. And after I adhered everything together, I added some of the Twitterpated Designer Buttons. Both the Pleated Ribbon and the Twitterpated Designer Buttons are from the Stampin' Up! 2012 Occasions Mini Catalog, which will be around until the end of April. I'm thinking that these not only look like baby colors, they look like Easter colors! So I'm sure you'll be seeing them here again!
Whoever it is for whom you're creating something this week, I hope you have as much fun – and wear as big a smile – doing it as I had making this card!
Another Thank You Note!
Aloha, all!
Earlier in the week, I shared a sample of a Thank You card that I'd made with all NEW products – from the 2012 Sale-a-Bration catalog. But today I'm taking a hint from fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator (and my 2nd upline) Sandy Hancock, and using up some of my left over Christmas paper to make those Thank You notes!
This was a quick card that I made last night with scraps from the Letters to Santa Designer Series Paper that is featured in the 2012 Stampin' Up! Idea Book and Catalog. While you and I know it came from Christmas paper, there's no design that requires it to be used on a Christmas card (no santas or ornaments). But sending it out this time of the year, with red and green as the main color, still feels holiday-ish to me!
The red here is Riding Hood Red and the green is Old Olive. The Taffeta Ribbon is also Riding Hood Red. My first go round with this card had the background Riding Hood Red Card Stock looking awfully plain, so I pulled out the Snow Burst Textured Impressions Embossing Folder to give it a bit more interest. Good News – this Embossing Folder will still be available after the Holiday Mini expires next week!
Here is the sketch that I used for this card. It's not a new sketch, but it's been awhile since I used it. I just love having sketches around and this one was on page 43 of my 2010 Greeting Card Layout eBook, which is still available on a CD. Just check over on the right for more information about both of my Card Layout eBooks! Of course, the sketch in the eBook has all the measurements included!
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I hope you're having fun making your own Thank You cards after a fun holiday season! I still have a couple more to make and hope to be able to share them before the year is out!
Merry Christmas!
Aloha, all!
Today's cards are the very last that I made – and WILL make – for this Holiday season! At the point when I needed just a few more cards, I'd already put away ALL of my Christmas (and all fall season) stamps. By "put away," I mean they're in a box in the garage! I need the space for my Occasions Mini Products and all of the Stampin' Up! 2011-2012 Catalog sets that I have. There are a couple of those that I've not yet used, and I don't want them stuck away behind some Christmas stamps where they'll be forgotten until the Retired Stamp List comes out in June. Nope – they're going to be used.
But I did leave one set out for a "just in case" moment, and this was it. It's called Many Merry Messages, and can be found back in the "Greetings" section of the Stampin' Up! Catalog. The reason that I chose the "Seasons Greetings" stamp is that I just like the way it's scripted. I still had some scraps from the Letters to Santa designer Series Paper left, and I was able to fill up a card front very nicely with it, thank you! I added a knot tied with Riding Hood Red Taffeta Ribbon, placed a few coordinating layers behind the greeting, and away I went – and away THEY went into the mail!
I hope you're having a wonderfully peaceful day with as many family and friends around as possible. Our day will be quiet with just my husband and I enjoying the day to ourselves. Depending on the weather (yes, Hawaii has weather, especially in our little part that's called a Rain Forest!) we may visit some friends in their new home. Otherwise, we'll listen to some Christmas music and do some reading.
Merry Christmas!
It’s Christmas Eve! Are You Ready?
Aloha, all!
Well, I can truthfully say that, when it comes to sending out Christmas cards, I am definitely ready for Christmas. They all went in the mail yesterday, and everyone should receive theirs before the new year (hey, it's progress from last year!). But I did take pictures of them so you can see what I did to make my last-minute rush a little bit of fun for me!
For the second batch of last minute cards, I was determined to get rid of all of those darling Winter Wishes Stitched Felt pieces that I bought. Yes, I bought not one but TWO packs of those once I saw how other demonstrators were using them in their cards. What I'd really wanted most of all were the wreaths so that I could include one of those "door" cards for the ladies taking my class last week. They really liked the cards, as did I, along with a card that used one of the snowflakes. But there were still wreaths and snowflakes left, along with the little pair of very warm looking mittens and gorgeous holly leaves and berries. For these cards, I decided to go with some designs I'd seen online that I'd really liked.
The first card used up the last of my wreaths, and I got the design from Linda Throgmorton's Etsy shop. This is SO quick and simple and you can use any Designer Series Paper you have left lying around and it won't clash with the wreath at all.
I got the idea for this layout from a post by Christine Crutcher, though her card had just a bit more work to it that I was willing to put in for these last minute cards. I did use her idea to use some of the light plaid paper from the Frostwood Lodge Designer Series Paper set, but I added in some of the Cherry Cobbler Plaid as a background to make the lighter plaid "pop" a bit. I was getting to the end of my last roll of Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding Ribbon, so I opted to tie the ribbon along the short side of the card rather than the long – good thing because I had 8 inches left when these cards were done!
Finally I had the Holly Stitched Felt left. But I didn't need 8 cards (or so I thought! – more later). So I put two of the pieces of Holly together to make this card using a layout that I found in a Zibbet Store called Whimsy Art. I tied these cards together with the last of my Cherry Cobbler Quilted Satin Ribbon (remember, I was out of the Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding!).
Once I finished with these, I was really wishing it was two or three weeks earlier, because I would have ordered up more of those Stitched Felt pieces and made lots more cards with them! So now I'm really going to pay attention to what I'm buying from the Occasions Mini Catalog to make sure I don't wait until the last minute to make my Mother's Day cards for a May 5th craft fair! (Oh, no! I can't believe I'm already thinking about May 2012! Let's get New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, St. Patty's Day and Easter out of the way first!!!)
Whatever you're doing this Christmas weekend, I hope you're having a lot of fun with it!
I'd used most of the snowflake
Just Two Days Before Christmas!
Aloha, all!
On Monday I posted that I was making last minute Christmas Cards and hoping to get them in the mail on Tuesday! Well, a few did get into the mail Tuesday, but my list kept growing as the mail came IN, and the last of those cards aren't going into the mail until today. There are two destined for Hawaii addresses, and they may actually get there tomorrow. But the rest of those cards aren't going to be in anyone's mailbox until NEXT Tuesday at the earliest.
Today's cards are three of those that were in Monday's picture. For all three I had two purposes in mind: (1) Get some cards done with that dynamite new set, Snow Much Fun! This was one of the sets that we could preorder from the 2011-2012 Stampin' Up! catalog, and I just had to have it! Then along came the Holiday Mini Catalog, and this went on the back burner. Until Monday, when out they came. Purpose (2) was to make use of my 2011 Greeting Layout eBook so I didn't have to reinvent the wheel (layout, that is).
So here we go with Card #1: I just love the little bird rolling that snowball along fast and furiously! He looks as tired as he should be after making that big ball! He's soon going to join his friends with that smiling snowman. The layout is the same layout as on page 45 of my Card Layout eBook, just turned sideways. I used Riding Hood Red and Old Olive for the main colors for this card as those were the colors I had out to go with the designer series paper I had out on the table at the moment. I highlighted the "shadows" that are part of the stamp itself with some Marina Mist ink that I applied with a Blender Pen. All of the circles for the little snowball bird were cut with my Circle Scissors Plus. Boy did that get a workout this Christmas season! Peeking out from the background layer is striped paper that, while not Old Olive, does complement the colors in the snowman's scarf. If you don't recognize the paper from the Christmas papers this year, it's because it's one of the designs in the Spice Cake Designer Series Paper Set. So if you've run out of Christmas paper, you might check out whatever you have left of Spice Cake!
For my second card of the day, I turned to the Christmas Tree that's in the same stamp set – and once again with a cute little bird! She's topping that tree with her bright little Robin Hood Red coloring that accents the decorative balls with the same colors. The tree itself is all Old Olive applied with a blender pen. Those blender pens are awesome when you want to do some shading as I did with this tree. I wanted the green to be darker in some areas to look like there was a bit or shadow and I could do that with no problem at all! The papers for this card came from Letters to Santa in the main Catalog (you can't see these colors if you look at the catalog; but they're the main patterns on the pages with the Santa and the Merry and Bright images. Lovely paper with a muted diagonal stripe. The strip on the background layer is from one of the papers in the Christmas Lane Simply Scrappin' Kit. Can you tell I'm scrounging all over for the last remnants of my holiday papers? You bet – this is where I want to be when a season is about to be over!
The pattern for this card is the same as that on page 35 of my 2011 Greeting Card Layout eBook, and again I turned it 90 degrees. These layouts are SOO flexible!
Finally my third card goes back to the little bird running with that snowball, but this time paired up with the snowman who's about to throw his own snowball. You don't suppose he's going to throw it at the bird, do you? Of course not; I think they're both aiming for the same point! The paper for this card is another sheet from the Letters to Santa designer series paper set, and the ribbon and background circles are all Riding Hood Red to coordinate with it. I started to add some colors to the stocking cap worn by Mr. Snowman, but decided to just leave this as a red and white card, with the little bit of Marina Mist shadowing that lovely white snow! This card is from page 43 of my Greeting Cad Layout eBook!
So there are my cards for Monday. Tomorrow I'll share some cards that I made to get rid of another part of my Holiday Mini stash! I hope you're having fun watching me scramble around doing last minute stuff I could have done a month ago. But what fun would that have been?!
Last Minute Christmas Cards!
Aloha, all!
Yes, today is officially the "last minute" for me to get my Christmas Cards made. I needed a break for a bit, so I thought I'd take the time to show you what I've accomplished so far between my class projects for last Saturday and the cards that I made today.
As you can see, I got out the Stampin' Up! stamp sets that I've not used AT ALL this season. I'm not sure why I think I'll use all my Christmas sets every year when I end up falling in love with two or three and leaving the others to languish in my craft room closet. But that's what happens! This year it was even worse when I realized that three of the first sets that I bought this season hadn't even been mounted to make them ready to use! The sets are Snow Much Fun, Merry and Type, and Forest Festivities. The first two are in the "big" catalog and the third is in this year's Holiday Mini Catalog.
One fun part of today's big push to get the cards made was to grab some sketches from my Greeting Card Layout eBooks to use for the projects. The three on the back row on the left use sketches from the New 2011 Greeting Card Layout eBook. Another card is made from a sketch I CASEd from a card made by another Stampin' Up! demonstrator (I'll find her name before I focus on that card), and the others are new sketches for me. Already the 2012 eBook is taking shape! (To purchase either of the eBooks, just click on a link over at the right to get more information and to see a sample from each book.)
As the week goes on, I'll share more detail about as many of the cards as I can fit in. For now, it's back to card-making 'cuz these babies have to go in the mail TOMORROW!!!
A Sketch Saved the Day!
Aloha, all!
I'm hostessing my last Christmas Card making class today and last night realized that I definitely needed a card for a younger person. So I pulled out Forest Festivities, with the cute little animals, and was stopped dead in my tracks. It was late and I couldn't figure out what to do with it!
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Create With Connie and Mary to the rescue!! I was going to go to my own Card Layout Sketchbook, but then I remembered that Create With Connie and Mary is giving away FREE Occasions Edition subscriptions to one person who enters their sketch challenge each week this month. Now, I don't count for this as I already have an "in" for the Occasions Edition. But YOU might want to try this sketch out!
And here's the card I made using the sketch. I managed to change the shapes around a bit, but it still accomplished what I wanted!
Besides the sketch, I didn't want to recreate the wheel on the coloring of the picture (who has time for that when you're getting ready for a class??!!). So I went to Split Coast Stampers and found this picture colored by Marilyn SanClemente. I tweaked it a bit, but this is what I wanted it to look like. The colors are Real Red, Wild Wasabi, So Saffron and Blush Blossom. Marilyn used watercolor pencils, but I used Blender Pens and Classic Ink Pads – except for the Blush Blossom, where I used the Stampin' Write Marker, the only way you can get that color these days. The greeting is from the same stamp set.
The Snowflake is from the Winter Wishes Stitched Felt set that's in the Stampin' Up! Holiday Mini Catalog (as is the Forest Festivities Stamp Set). I decided to add a So Saffron Button from the Subtles Collection to pick up the color from the stamped image. I glued both the felt and the button on with Tombow Multipurpose Liquid Glue. It takes awhile for it to dry; but once it dries, it's on there!
Thanks to Create With Connie and Mary and Marilyn SanClemente for saving the day for me! And don't forget to go over to Create With Connie and Mary and enter your card in their challenge! You could win a subscription to their fabulous 6-week, project-every-day, Occasions Edition!
A Glimmery Christmas Card!
Aloha, all!
I told you that I'd share some samples made with some of the fab new products to be offered in Stampin' Up!'s Occasions Mini Catalog, and here's another: A gorgeous Sizzlit Die called "Paper Doily." This die is 4" in diameter and so beautifully fills up the center of a 5-1/4" Greeting card (which fits perfectly into Stampin' Up!'s Medium Square Envelope).
The big trick with this is removing all those little pieces from the doily. But it didn't take me too long and it really felt very peaceful just sitting and relaxing while I used my paper piercer and piercing mat to free up the little critters. I reminded myself that not everything that I do has to be easy. Some beauty requires a bit more work to make it happen!
To make this into a card that feels like a Christmas Card, I used some of Stampin' Up!'s Jingle Bells and stamped "Merry" from the stamp set, Tiny Tags, and punched them all out with the Jewelry Tag Punch. The colors I used were Real Red and Night of Navy (the same colors as I used in the card and mats). I stamped one with VersaMark and heat embossed it using Silver Embossing Powder. I tied them to the center Red Glimmer Brad with some Wisteria Wonder Baker's Twine (another new product from the Occasions Mini!), which seemed to accent the Night of Navy background pretty well for its being more purple than blue. The corner pieces are each 1/4th of a circle of Silver Glimmer Paper punched with both Scallop Circle Punches (first the 1-3/4" then the 2-3/8").
Today in the Craft Room I'm working with some more of the new products, but I won't be sharing them with you until after the first of the year. I'm working on some designs for the Create With Connie and Mary Occasions Edition and I have to get at least one or two completed before I get back into my last-minute Christmas projects.
I hope you're having as much fun paper crafting this Christmas season as I am!
Another Busy Week!
Aloha, all!
It is truly hard for me to believe that a week has gone by since I checked in with you to let you know what's going on in Robin's Craft Room. I can tell you this – a LOT has been going on! Let's see what I can tick off quickly:
- Orders for my CD are coming in and CDs are going out in the mail!
- We had the last of the Stamp-a-Stack of Christmas cards class (whew – 21 cards took some work!)
- I received my pre-order products from the Occasions Mini Catalog and just could not resist trying some of the fabulous new products Stampin' Up! will be offering! I can hardly wait to show them to you, too!
- I spent a whole morning with one of my downline members just having fun learning about a lot of new and old Stampin' Up! products.
- I'm planning my projects for the Create With Connie and Mary Occasions Mini Edition (I'm so excited to be back designing for them again!)
- I've been planning for next week's final Christmas Card class in Robin's Craft Room!
- And I finished the tutorial that I promised in my last blog post! If you're on my newsletter mailing list, it's probably already in your e-mail box! If you're not on my newsletter mailing list, if you sign up this week or next, I'll be sure to get the newsletter out to you, too!
One of the cards in next week's class will be this one! I've seen so many versions of this great card design around the Internet that I don't know who's idea it was originally. But, while I can't take credit for the design, I can take credit for my own interpretation of it! For my card, I used Very Vanilla Card Stock for the door panels and Cherry Cobbler Card Stock for the card base. I used some Cherry Cobbler ink to sponge the edges of all the Very Vanilla pieces as well as to stamp the greeting.
The Wreath on the "door" is one of the pieces from the Winter Wishes Stitched Felt packet featured in the Stampin' Up! Holiday Mini Catalog. There are four of the wreaths in the packet and I bought two packets – so there's plenty for whoever signs up for my class! Over the next couple of weeks I'll be sharing projects with the rest of the pieces in the packet.
I added a medium size Clear Rhinestone Brad for a door knob and, as I frequently do, I tied this all together with Stampin' Up! ribbon – this time with some of the luscious Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding.
And here's the sketch for today's card (or should I say, "This week's card"?). I have just got to make more time to share with you – and that's what I'm going to work on THIS week! Ah, a New Year's resolution early.
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