CASING my own card for Rudolph Day

Last week I made a card for one of my sisters' birthday. I have had lots of nice comments on it, so thank you if you were one of my visitors, and thank you too to Di for featuring it in this weeks Snippets Playground picks. (Sorry if I haven't managed to visit you back. Blogger has been really difficult all weekend,  either refusing to open your posts although I could see the thumbnails, or not letting me comment. It even stole some photos from my post on my other blog, but it did return them the next day!)

Anyway, I was quite happy with the way my card had turned out, so I decided to use a similar style for some Christmas cards. 

As with the birthday card, I used an embossed background, white on white this time, a white embossed mat, a frame with only the sentiment inside it, and the main feature in the lower left corner with a smaller one to balance it in the upper right corner.

I used a variety of red snippets to cut the Nellie Snellen frame and the poinsettias which are Marianne dies. I again used accent beads, dyed yellow with butterscotch alcohol ink for the flower centres, but they looked a bit dull against the red, so I added a little yellow stickles for some sparkle. Then I picked some green snippets to cut the fir branches, again a Marianne die, and the holly. I can't remember what make that die is. I usually know by the colour but this one is yellow (?). Three flat-backed red pearls made the holly berries, and the sentiment is a Hot-off-the-press stamp.

As Sarn wants to see two 'makes' for her challenge, I set about making a second card, again using a similar format, but this time I used a rectangular card - the one above is a 15cm square though it doesn't look like it in the photo. I thought "cameras never lie"!

This time I used a plain white background and a larger mat. I chose a snippet of pale aqua paper and stamped it with a lovely background stamp and versamark ink.  This is one of my oldest stamps by Creative Expressions, and I have used it so much. I heat embossed it with white cosmic shimmer detail powder. The frame is cut with two dies from a new set of sizzix framelets called fancy labels. For once they do fit inside one another properly to cut a frame, which pleases me no end, as I don't have to cut round the outside of the die like I usually do. I used some thin holographic paper for it. I bought a big box of this from QVC many, many years ago, and I use it frequently, but there is still enough to last me a lifetime! 

For the image I used a Chocolate Baroque robin stamp. Because he was facing the opposite way from what I wanted, I stamped him and scanned him into the computer, flipped the image and printed it out four times, in case I decided to decoupage it. I coloured it with copic markers, and fussy cut it. It was a case of a sharp knife and some tiny snips to get around some of the leaves, but I think it was worth it. For the balance in the top corner I cut three snowflakes with more Marianne dies, using the left over pieces of the white, silver and aqua papers, glued them together and put a clear gem in the centre. The sentiment is the same one used on the previous card, on the centre die from a large spellbinders set, which I lightly inked through the die before I removed it. I frosted the ivy leaves and the top of the logs with some ice crystal stickles because I do like a bit of sparkle!

I decided against decoupaging the robin corner as it didn't really need another layer, so I was left with three more robins printed. I thought , rather than waste them, I would make some more of these cards, so I now have a set of four to add to my collection. I have about twenty five made so far which isn't all that many, but it is a lot more than I had at this time last year.

I used up a nice lot of snippets making these cards, so as well as linking them to Rudolph Day over on Sarn's blog, Stamping for Pleasure, I shall also take them over to Pixie's Snippets Challenge and see what is going on in the Playground today.