Rudolf Day Recycled

I have just returned from two weeks in UK, and having had a lovely week with my sister who came back with me, I now have a list of 'must do' projects to complete before I fly back to UK in ten days time for our grand-daughter's wedding. So I made a start today with two recycled Christmas cards for Rudolph Day tomorrow. (That's the 25th of each month when Sarn encourages to make and show two Christmas cards). I needed something quick to do, so I rifled through the pile of old Christmas card bits that I have saved, and chose a few items to play around with.

For the first card I have used a red and gold background from one card, a post-box image from another, and a red mirri-card poinsettia from a third. (It is much more red than it looks in the photo).I made a white A6 base card, and used a snippet of red card and a gold peel-off border to mat the image, and another tiny snippet of the card to hold a gold peel-off greeting. Some gold-ice stickles on the snow gave it a bit of sparkle, and that was one done. As is the nature of shiny card, the gold background is marred by my own reflection as I took the photo, but I won't worry about that too much.

For my second card I used a bright robin from one card, a holly wreath from another, a snippet of robin paper and a green sheet from a Papermania 6"x6" pad. I fussy cut the robin and fixed him behind the holly wreath which was already cut out. For the background I used a Martha Stweart cut-around-the -page punch set, and matted it onto some green holly paper. Then I attached this to a white square base card. The white background paper has tiny robins dotted all over it, but when it was assembled I noticed that the top left hand corner was completely bare, so I added a small red peel-off greeting there.

So that is my two cards for this month, and I have to say that I am very pleased to have used up some more of my salvaged oddments, which I always keep but rarely use! Tomorrow I am off to the hospital early for laser surgery on my poor left eye, and as I have no idea whether I will be able to use it to do anything on the computer when I get home, I shall try to link this up before I go.

As well as the Rudolph Day challenge on Sarn's blog, Stamping for Pleasure, I will also link up in Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Recycled circles

I didn't really intend to post any more before my trip to UK tomorrow, but having finished the frame I was making for my son earlier than I expected, (see previous post), I found myself with an evening to spare, so I gave myself the feel-good factor by putting inserts in the set of ten Christmas cards I made for the last Rudolph Day, and then I had a look in my box of bits to recycle from cards we received. One of them had this lovely image in a circle, with the word Christmas written across it, and Blessings on a separate banner below it. Because the wording was an integral part of the image, I had to keep it as it was, but I cut around the top of the circle, and then loosely around the word. I didn't like it much, so in a mad moment I decided to fussy-cut the letters, which took me quite a while, but was worth it. I cut the banner for Blessings as it was, and then I put it away in my WIP folder and forgot it.

On having a second look I thought it had some potential, so I made a background from my lovely Cover-a-page holly stamp from Impression Obsession, stamped with versamark and embossed with Cosmic shimmer bright gold powder. I made a base card for the image and then found my holly was not quite wide enough, so I trimmed it down a bit and made a border for each side using one of my sizzix border dies, and a matching infil die, and some red card from my snippet box.  I assembled the card and noticed one or two berries in the top left corner had not stamped very well, so I used the little red circles from the border die cut, to cover the berries. 

Having just seen Di's entry for Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge, which this week is 'Going round in circles', I realised that my card fitted the bill too, so I shall link it up, and also link it in Pixie's Snippets Playground, week 118,  then I had better  think about packing my case!

I will try to drop in now and again while I am away, but I am not sure what internet access I will have, nor whether I will manage to do much using my tablet instead of the computer.

A Leaving Gift

Anyone who follows me on my 'other blog' will know that I am flying over to UK on Thursday of this week, primarily to attend the funeral of my sister. But before that, I am spending a week with my middle son who is leaving for a new life in Denmark, the following weekend. I will be helping him to leave his current flat in a clean and tidy state, so that, with a bit of luck, he will get his deposit back! On Sunday his brothers have organised a family lunch for him, which I will now be able to go to. I love it when we all get together. I wanted to make a little gift for Tom to let him know he is not forgotten, so I put together this frame.

I started off with a digital scrapbook kit called Timeless Romance from Alexis Design Studio at Digichick, and opened up a background paper. I made it several degrees lighter. (I made all of this except the script in Adobe Photoshop).The main images of Tom himself, us as his parents and the full family group at the base, are all added full colour, and then each of his brothers, some with their partners, are added down the sides as lighter images. I clipped each photo to an artistic photo mask, to take away any strong edges and make them blend together better. The masks come from a variety of digital scrap sites, bought over the passed couple of years and stored on my computer. I then had two empty corners which I filled with flower embellishments from the same digi scrapbook kit as the paper. When it was done, I flattened all the layers and saved it as a jpeg file.

Next I opened publisher and imported the image, resizing it to exactly fit into a basic clip frame. I am not a great fan of these, but it was the best on offer in my local shops here.

I then opened the script in my silhouette cameo soft ware. I bought it as a ready-made cutting file from the silhouette store. I sized it to fit the centre of my picture and cut it from black vinyl. I weeded out the unwanted pieces and used transfer tape to position it onto the page. I was wary of lifting the print with the transfer tape so I de-stickied it (?) by pressing it onto my arms first, and it worked fine. I had to re-cut the word 'WHERE' because I tore it first time around, but other than that, it all worked just fine.

I hope he likes it as a little reminder of the family while he is away. I am sure we will still see him out here in Spain for holidays, and back in UK for work sometimes. He has spent almost a year commuting between offices here and in Denmark, so I am sure he will occasionally have to do the same in reverse. And of course, I feel a holiday in Denmark coming on, once he is nicely settled there!