Rudolph Day Challenge - August 2019

Well, contrary to my usual posts, I have in fact done quite a lot of crafting in the past week or so, but as I was mainly making Birthday cards for the next two months, so my visitors could take them back to UK for me, I am unable to show them yet. But I did remember to take some photos this time so I will try to post them when the birthdays have all passed.

But I did also make some Christmas cards for this challenge, and I am writing my post early before the next two lots of visitors take my attention. I will schedule it to post on 25th. It has been a very busy Summer!

I recently sent for some new Sweet Dixie dies. I had to wait a while for them to arrive as they had to be sent from America to the UK store I was buying from, and then be forwarded on to me, but I sometimes get stung for high duties when I buy direct from USA.

For this set I used the Three Kings die, and a star from the stable scene set.

I started off with a playing session with my Brusho crystals. I love the ultrmarine one which splits into turquoise and purple when water is added. For some I sprinkled the dye onto slightly damp card and sprayed it with water, and for others I made the card very wet and added a few dye crystals. 

I also played around with red, yellow and green dyes. Some came out rather dark but I managed to use parts from them. Brushos are very strong pigments and I tend to bit a bit too heavy handed. But practice makes perfect so they say.

When they were dry I cut out the bits I liked best and added them to white or cream pre-cut 13.5cm square cards. Then I cut the kings from either black card, or silver or red mirri-card, according to which looked best on each background. 

The sentiment is cut from two different die sets so they are slightly different fonts, but they worked together OK. For the black ones and the red one I cut the star from gold glitter card, and then cut silver stars for the silver kings.

Apart from waiting overnight for the backgrounds to be properly dry, these cards were relatively quick to make, and I soon had four of each colour-way assembled.

Now I want another play with the Brushos so I may make a few more. I added these eight to my stash and did a quick count-up and was pleased to find I have over ninety cards made so far. I am just about on schedule, which was a dozen cards each month, so I will have plenty ready to write and take with me to UK when I visit in October. They will be left with family members to distribute by hand or pop in the post nearer to Christmas. Our post from Spain has got very expensive at 1.85€ per card, so any I can save in this way is helpful, especially as I send around 120 cards each year!

So now I will schedule this to post on 25th August, AKA Rudolph Day, and when it is published I will link it up with the Rudolph Day Challenge on Scrappy Mo's blog. Why not pop over with me and add a card of your own.

Post Script. I managed to make another set of 8 of this design before my visitors arrived, just varying the colours in the background and the mirri-card.