Christmas 2014 – Christmas Card Making – Lawn Fawn, Simon Says Stamp – Happy Holidays!

This card I originally made with the intention of giving it to my best friend, but I wasn’t wholly happy with the final result so I ended up making a different card to gift to her. This first photo is the rough assembly to see how everything looked together.

I had chose papers from the Lawn Fawn Snow Day 6 x 6 Paper Pack and stamped some Christmas trees using the Simon Says Stamp Be Joyful Stamp Set. The sentiment ‘Happy Holidays’ was also from the Simon Says Stamp Be Joyful Stamp Set. The cord is Lawn Fawn Peppermint Cord.

I used my Crop-a-dile Big Bite II to punch some holes either end of the cord to thread the Lawn Fawn Peppermint cord through.

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I end up using the stamped trees as stencils, as I didn’t like the way the ink looked. I used the same red paper from the walrus Christmas scene card also from the Lawn Fawn Snow Day 6×6 Paper Pack.

I used foam squares to adhere the sentiment.

I tried to fill the blank space in the right-hand side corner with a bunny, but I still didn’t like the result. I ended up letting my partner give it to his Nan & Pop, so the card wasn’t wasted.

Christmas 2014 – Christmas Card Making – Lawn Fawn Arctic Critters Stamp

This card is one of three cards I made at a friend’s house at a card making get-together. This is a really cute card and I immediately knew I wanted to give it to my cousin and aunt for Christmas (I guess my uncle too but boy’s don’t usually care for this kind of thing.)

I started this card by using Simon Says Stamp Christmas Scene Stencil, I drew around the slopes onto white card stock and then cut it out. I tried the slopes on a couple different pattern papers until I decided on the one pictured, as I thought it looked the best and helped with what I was wanting to accomplish in the scene.

After cutting the background pattern paper to size and adhering it, I stamped out the Walrus (which my friend and I continuously called a seal all night and were forever correcting ourselves) from the Lawn Fawn Arctic Critters Stamp Set. I did not have the co-ordinating dies at this stage so I simply cut it out with scissors. I used light grey pencils to colour him in and then used one of my friend’s textas to scratch in a bit of shading.

I stamped and cut out the hat separately, also from the Lawn Fawn Arctic Critters Stamp Set, and also coloured it in using the textas.

After looking at the scene I knew I wanted trees as it looked too bland and empty. I first tried to stamp some trees from a stamp set but didn’t really like it. My friend had some Christmas elements and had about four different Christmas trees. One was a red tree and I thought it looked really good. I wanted more than one tree though.

So I used the element as a stencil and I turned it over onto the backside of a red pattern paper from the Lawn Fawn Snow Day 6 x 6 Paper Pack and I traced around the edges and then cut the trees out with scissors. I positioned them and used foam stickers to get the dimension to the scene that I wanted.

And then I had another problem, there was an empty space in the top right-hand side corner. Well I didn’t have a sentiment yet? So I decided quickly on doing a ribbon banner and chose out the ‘Merry’ and ‘Christmas’ from the Simon Says Stamp Holiday Hellos Clear Stamp Set. I used Tuxedo Black Memento ink and then adhered the sentiment banner with foam tape.

I was very pleased with the result and I think the seal -oops! I mean, Walrus, looks super cute.

Christmas 2014 – Christmas Card Making – Simon Says Stamp Big Holiday Wishes

This is one of three cards I made with a friend at a card making get-together. I made this one for my grandma. I chose out the green mitten pattern card from the Lawn Fawn Snow Day 6 x 6 Paper Pack and a red pattern paper. I cut them to size not in equal halves and adhered them to the card base.

I stamped the sentiment ‘Sending Big Holiday Wishes’ from the Simon Says Stamp Big Holiday Wishes stamp set with green memento ink onto plain white card stock and I cut the card stock down to size. I positioned the sentiment on the card askew. I didn’t want the sentiment just by itself and if I pulled the sentiment to either side then the opposite side looked empty. So I adhered it to the left-hand side and then started on filling the right-hand side with embellishments.

I used the mitten stamps from the Simon Says Stamp Big Holiday Wishes stamp set with green memento ink to stamp the mittens and I cut them out with scissors. I then cut a small length of the Lawn Fawn Peppermint cord and adhered it to the mittens.I then positioned and adhered the mittens beside the sentiment.

I had left it like that for a while and it wasn’t until I was searching through my craft drawers at home that I found some old Christmas ribbon which I used to finish off the card and create a border between the green and red pattern paper on the card.

I think this card is fun and bold and really simple to make. I’m sure my grandma will love it.

I hope this card inspired you!

Christmas 2014 – Christmas Card Making – Basic Grey Evergreen Holly Jolly Paper

This is another card I made before starting my blog so I don’t have the photos during construction.This one I made with my favourite uncle in mind. I really liked the ‘Holly Jolly’ print pattern paper in the Basic Grey Evergreen 6 x 6 paper pack and decided on using that.

Then I picked out some coordinating paper, a plain blue and an angled stripe pattern. All the colours go together perfectly. Basic Grey’s Evergreen series is obviously very well thought out with many combinations to use with all papers coordinating beautifully.

I decided early on to use the blue paper as a stripe to separate the bolder prints of the Holly Jolly and the stripes. It looked okay but I wanted to have a little more. So I stamped ‘Season’s Greetings’ either end of the blue stripe in red and green memento ink. There was enough of a gap in the middle of the two stamped sentiments to put a mistletoe stamp. The mistletoe stamp is a part of the Penny Black’s Whooo’s Wishing stamp set.

To stamp it, as the berries and leaves are one whole stamp, I had to first cover the berries with washi tape, then add the green ink to the leaves, then remove the washi tape and then finally stamp it down. I had to repeat this process with the berries. First covering the leaves with washi tape, then adding the red ink to the berries, then removing the washi tape, and then finally stamping it down. It took me a couple goes to get it right and I practiced first on a separate piece of scrap paper. I was happy with the results.

It still didn’t look completely finished. So I used some brown hemp cord to create a border top and bottom to the blue paper. And I finished with a little brown cord bow at the top corner with the scrap piece of cord I had left from the borders.

Overall, I was quite pleased with the results and process of making this card. This card has been posted to my uncle and I’m excited to hear from him to find how he liked the card.

Christmas 2014 – Christmas Card Making – Basic Grey Evergreen with Penny Black Whoooo’s Wishing Ho ho Ho Stamp

I made this Christmas card before I started my blog so didn’t think to take pictures of it in progress. I made this and two others at a friend’s house. We got together to make a few Christmas cards together.

I made this one for my father.

I used the papers from the Basic Grey Evergreen 6 x 6 paper pack. I chose out the pretty pattern paper with the red birds and the leaves first. But I didn’t want to use it as the entire background. I wanted to try a vertical stripe effect so I chose the green pattern paper as the background with the bird pattern paper as a stripe in the middle on top.

Now I was at a loss. It took me quite a while to brainstorm that I would put a lighter pattern paper in the middle of the bird pattern paper with a sentiment. But it took me even longer to to think of using the ‘Ho ho Ho’ sentiment stamp from Penny Black’s Whoooo’s Wishing stamp set and to use it in an alternating pattern of red and green.

I was pleasantly surprised with the effect and the results. It was still missing a little something, so I finished it off with some hemp cord by tying a couple bows top and bottom of the sentiment piece.

I’m really happy with the result and it has since been posted to my father and I hope he enjoys the results as well!

I hope this Christmas card inspires you and has given you some ideas for card making of your own.

Christmas 2014 – Christmas Card Making – Penny Black Leaping Deer

I started making this card with my partner’s grandparents in mind. This will be the first time I have made a card for them or gifted them with anything so I wanted this to look really nice to have a lasting impression.

I started by choosing some papers that I really liked that coordinated and as I had them laying one on top of the other I thought I should just have that as the layout as it looks really nice.

I didn’t want it flat and dull though. So I added foam squares so that the green and red panels would be raised on the right-hand side. I really liked this effect and how the papers coordinated but then I became stuck for how to finish the card.

After about 6 different ideas all that weren’t good enough or didn’t look the way I liked, I remembered I had the Penny Black Leaping Deer stamp and I stamped this onto a yellow pattern paper. All papers are from the Basic Grey Evergreen series.

I used the Simon Says Stamp Hello Holidays sentiments stamp pack to stamp the sentiment below the reindeer. I stamped ‘Christmas’ in black and stamped ‘Blessed’ over the top in green. I had a Christmas flower embellishment left over from a few Christmases ago and so I used this to fill the blank space in the top corner of the yellow panel. I finished the reindeer off with a red rhinestone for the nose.

I’m very happy with the way this card finally turned out. Though with struggling through failing ideas it took a lot longer to create than I had originally estimated (I use episodes of CSI as my way to tell time; it took approximately 3 episodes, I estimated 1 for completion).