Well maybe I am just a little bit. See I post around 150 cards every Christmas, and normally by July I have made well over half of them. This year I have made less than a dozen! July and August are so hot and sticky out here that I do essential crafting only, and in September I am in UK for two weeks. Seeing as I need to post my cards the first week of December at the latest, you can see I have very little time to get the other 140-odd cards made! So I have decided to make them in runs of ten or more and started with a card for Rudolph day today, which you can read all about on Sarn's blog, Stamping for Pleasure.
So for these I went to a very underused skill of my Silhouette Cameo machine - the Print & Cut technique. It is not something that has appealed to me so far, but having worked through a couple of tutorials on it, I can see it has potential for more than I had given it credit for. It certainly helped me speed up with this project.
First I found an image I liked on a Faye Whittaker CD, and with a bit of fiddling around, got it to open in my Silhouette software. Then I cropped it to a small oval and printed it ten times. These then cut with the machine in seconds. Here they are still adhered to the sticky carrier mat.
Next I found an oval frame in my silhouette file library, resized it to match the image and cut ten of these. I glued each image onto its frame, and then set about making the base cards. Once again I stayed with the small A6 cards for ease of international posting, using some burgundy card to match the frames. I made a set of backing papers with white paper and a variety of embossing folders. I rummaged through a box of Christmas bits and found ribbons, gems and labels to match the image, and die-cut a few sentiments and embellishments from the snippets left over from cutting the frames, and then it was just a case of sitting and putting them all together.
Last night I managed to assemble seven of them, and you can see the pieces ready to do the last three today. Here is a close up of two to show the lovely embossing detail.
The folder on the left is from Crafters Companion The Snowman range, and the one on the right was a gift from my lovely friend Di. I love it Di. Thank you so much. I also used two other folders on some of the others. It makes it more interesting to do a run if they are not all identical.
Now I shall go and link this to Sarn's blog and think about what I am going to do for the next run!.
11 comments:
Well done Kate on getting the most out of your machine!! These are gorgeous cards, and I love the colour scheme you have used.
Blessings
Maxine
Well for a late starter on the Christmas cards you have certainly made a GREAT start to them .... keep up the good work!
Kathyk
Well done Kate - a run of 10 cards is good going. Beautiful cards too, love the image and design you've gone for and am delighted you like the EF :)
Ha, I'm sitting here struggling to make a run of two Christmas cards right this minute!
Hugs, Di xx
Those are gorgeous. I am really missing my Cameo (it is still boxed up after moving house) and determined to make more use of it in the coming months. Ali x
Lovely cards Kate, the little girl image is so sweet and The embossing looks great. super colour scheme too.
Jean x
You've made a good start there Kate -I have about 4 cards so far, so will have to stir myself soon!
These are just lovely Kate. Congrats on mastering your Silhouette machine and making it see things your way for your crafting needs.
Hmmm . . . sounds like you're going to be VERY busy in the next few months.
Thanks for joining in with Rudolph Day again.
Hugs
Sarn xxx
These are all so lovely...each one is so pretty! Love the pretty image and that you combined them with a EF folder...well done on matching up so may different ones and they all look great!
Lovely set of cards, Kate. The embossing folders used are both beautiful but I the Lattice is my current favourite ... wasn't Di clever to source it for us :) And well done you for making so many similar cards at the same time ... sadly, I haven't got the concentration necessary for that, it's one at a time for me, but I can see the advantage doing it in runs when you have some 140 to make. Only another 130 to go :)) Elizabeth xx
Great cards, what a difference the embossed background makes each time!
Hi Kate, I'm late in commenting, but finally got the chance to visit some of the Rudolph cards. These are lovely. I enjoyed reading about your use of the Silhouette in creating them (mine is gathering dust!). I've never tried the Print stuff, just downloaded some designs. I was very impressed at your skill using this feature. Loved your oval mat & the ef's were wonderful. Beautiful cards, and with your Silhouette, you'll meet your goal quickly I'm sure! Thanks for sharing & inspiring.
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