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?!
