Something a bit different.

I sometimes get quite carried away designing the front of a card, but the base is nearly always a straight forward A6 or DL. This week I followed an online tutorial for making a 'Joy-fold' card and decided to have a go. I started with a 15 cm square, white card, though I actually trimmed this down by half a centimetre each way, and cut away half of the front flap. For the smaller card I used a 10 x 20cm piece of the same card, folded in half.

I had already decided which stamp I was using so I wanted two pieces of blue/snowy card for the backing. I found one sheet in my stash (origin unknown), and used it to cover the inner, right-hand flap. I couldn't find a suitable second piece so I printed out the mid blue, 'Joy to the world' sheet from the Artylicious Seasons' Greetings CD, and used a small piece of this to cover the front, left flap.

For the small card I stamped my image (Anita's stamps) onto a piece of very pale snowflake magazine paper. The polar bear didn't stand out as well as I had hoped so I tried stamping him again on some textured paper. I bought this paper many moons ago, when I saw it used to print beautiful baby photos on Create and craft. It has a soft, almost furry feel, but I cannot recall what it was called. I have to admit that I have used very little of it, though I have occasionally stamped soft baby toys on it for scrapbook pages. Anyway, it was a nice feel for this little bear, but he came out very muted, so I drew over the stamped lines with a royal blue permanent marker and that was a big improvement. I cut him out and glued him over the original image, and added stickles to the snowflakes. On the white card, this did not look too good, so I first mounted him onto some blue card, the back of an old Christmas card, and then mounted this onto the white. The small card was tucked under the front flap, so it opened from the left, centred, and glued in place. To add interest I used two strips of peel-off, sparkley snowflakes down each side. I then searched through my stash and found the big snowflake, again, origin unknown, (I must learn to catalogue my stash more carefully!), added a large colourless gem to its centre and stuck it in the top, left corner, to hold the flap down.

Inside the smaller card, I stamped one of my favourite Christmas script stamps by Crafty Individuals, on the left side. and then framed it, and the right side with my most used set of tapestry stamps, Starry Winter Night, leaving a space in the centre of the right-hand side for my greetings. This was, of course, done before I glued the smaller card in place!

I am entering this in the Bah! Humbug! Challenge 19; Snowflakes,
the ABC Christmas Challenge 10; J is for Joy-fold Card
Craft Your Days Away Challenge 20; White + one other colour