April Rudolph Day

Here we are at the 25th of the month again, so time once more to make a Christmas card or two. If you still don't know what this is, pop over to Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo and find out all about Rudolph Day.

Between some health issues within the family, and my new found interest in trying more complex crochet designs, I do not seem to have had much time for card-making, but I am happy to be getting a head start on my Christmas cards, so I was determined not to miss this challenge.

A long time ago I purchased some nice Christmas corner flourishes (cutting files), from the silhouette store, but I have never got around to using them. So this week I made some templates for card fronts in the Studio software, and played around with the corners, some script cutting files, and a stamp that hasn't seen ink in a long while, until they all fitted on my template, and came up with two designs.

The first fitted best on a rectangular card so I stamped the image in Memento pistachio ink, added colour with my copic markers to the holly around it (all part of the stamp), and cut it out with a plain oval die. I distressed the edges, added a small amount of glitter glue to the trees and holly, and set it aside. 

Next I embossed a piece of plain white card with my snowy embossing folder - sorry there is no make on it and I can't remember where it is from- and added it to a light green base card.

I cut the corner flourish and sentiment from matching green vinyl, and assembled it all.

The base card was made from half a sheet of the European-size card sometimes sold in Lidls, so I used the other half to make a second one the same.

My other design fitted better on a 15cm square card, so I rooted around in my Christmas snippets box and found a piece of holly paper for the background. I made a dark green base card, and cut the corner and script from dark green vinyl.

I then made a white base card, used a snippet of blue and silver backing paper, and cut the corner and script from navy blue vinyl.

So that is four more cards to add to my stash, and I shall now link them up at Scrappy Mo's, and as I haven't visited lately, I will also take them to Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Butterfly Challenge #51

I wanted to make a card for a friend who is having major surgery tomorrow, so I decided to have a go at the Butterfly Challenge for this fortnight, which is to use a butterfly of course, but also to use 'M' is for Margins and/or Mint. I love the colour mint and it just so happens that I have a fairly ancient versacolour ink pad called Mint, and also a Brilliance Pearlescent jade pad which is almost identical but with a sheen, so I was off to a good start. (These ink pads amaze me. They really are years old but they still work perfectly).

I do like making square cards, and when I was in UK earlier this year I bought a 12" x 12" pad of white card, so it is easy to cut a sheet in half and make two 6" square cards (or 15cm as I prefer to call it these days!).

I took a slightly smaller piece of white card from my eternal stash of white snippets and stamped it with my much loved, Impression Obsession Cover-a-card stamp, using the versacolour ink pad.

My margins were made from snippets rescued from a brochure from a well known High Street bank, which have been in my snippets box for ever. (We don't even bank with them any more!). I edged them with a Marianne border punch, and when they were attached to the card, I laced them together with mint embroidery thread. The tails of the thread were used to tie on a tag made from more snippets of the card and a Hot off the press sentiment stamp.

I wanted to add another colour so I used Memento ink pads, Pink blush and Rose bud, and my Altnew layered rose stamps, and the corresponding dies, and made three roses. - I love these stamps. There are three or four stamps for each flower which you use with increasingly pale ink and it gives a lovely result. The Misti stamp positioner is a great help when doing this.

The leaves were also cut with the Altnew die, from pieces of darker card from the same bank brochure, but they were too shiny to stamp on so I used a permanent marker to add a few lines.

I rubbed a small off-cut of white card with the Brilliance ink pad, to completely cover it, and when it was dry I punched out some tiny butterflies using X-cut and Marianne punches, and glued these randomly over the card and tag.

To me the card looked a bit 'unbalanced', and being a Libran, I didn't like this, so I rummaged through some boxes and found a green and blue butterfly on a cheap sheet of stickers from our todo shop. Putting this in the top right hand corner balanced it up for me. Then a few flat-back mint pearls gave the margins a lift and with the addition of a tiny pink and mint bow, my card was complete.

So I will link this up with Mrs A's Butterfly Challenge#51, and then, as I haven't been to play for a while, I will also take it over to Pixie's Snippets Playground, and see what my crafting friends have been up to.