August Rudolph day challenge

When I have enjoyed a visit from family or friends, it always leaves me feeling a little disorientated and deflated when they leave, so having taken our son to the airport on Monday morning, after a lovely fortnight's visit from him, I needed something to get me going. When I realised that it was already 23rd of the month I knew exactly what I needed to do - make some Christmas cards for the Rudolph day challenge on 25th. 

I have several new cutting files in my silhouette cameo library, some that I have purchased and others I have 'designed', so I went to those for some ideas. The file I chose was purchased from Craftsuprint and is a design by Lyn Simms.

I am trying to do some stash-busting, including my overflowing snippets boxes, but I did not have a enough matching green snippets to cut the panel, wreath, leaves and holly, so I started a new sheet of card and cut them three times. It was tricky cutting the holly branch from card, but I have found that Stampin' Up card is the best for using with my cameo, and it did work quite well. I needed to do a couple of repairs on the stems, but they really don't show. Then I found three snippets of fairly neutral patterned paper for the background panel, and matched them to plain snippets for the other layers. I made three A6 base cards from a colour that toned in with the rest, and glued all the layers together. 

The poinsettias were cut from snippets of dark red mirri-card and the white overlays from vinyl, and I used a yellow brad to hold them all together. The red sentiments are the last of my mini peel-offs.

So here are my three cards, all the same but slightly different!

The cut detail on the background panel looks rather 'lost' in these photos, so I wanted to make them a little more noticeable. In her card, the designer had added tiny red gems to all the berries, but I thought I would need too many for my three cards, so I used liquid perfect pearls instead, and then I felt I needed to add it to the berries on the holly branch as well, so here my first card revised!

As you can see, taking this one in natural lighting, instead of  the artificial lighting I used for the others last night, has brought out the colours better, and the details! But I quite like the tiny red berries so I think I'll add them to the other cards as well.

But first I will link this up with Rudolph Day challenge on Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo, and also to Pixie's Snippets Playground.

 

Three very different cards for three very different people.

Well I kept saying that I had needed a lot of cards for July that I would post about once the relevant birthdays had passed, and now we are in August, so I decided to lump three together in one post, or it might never get done.

1).  So first we have a straightforward birthday card that I made for a very dear friend who celebrated her 89th birthday a couple of weeks ago.

The motif is the Heartfelt Creations stamp - feathered daisy, stamped twice so the large daisy could be cut out and layered over the first one. I added a little colour with Copic markers. The frame is part of the Sue Wilson Greek island Collection dies - Kefalonia,  cut and scanned into my Silhouette cameo machine so I could resize it for the three layers. The daisy lace border, and the sentiment are Joanna Sheen Signature dies, and the background layer was embossed using  the Couture Creations Tied Together folder. Some tiny gems in the corners, a dazzler in the centre of the flower, and some stickles glitter glue in the 'eye' of the feather, finished it off.

Because I used a large sheet of blue card to make the base, there were enough off-cuts to make the frame and other embellishments. So I decided to do the same thing using the lighter blue card of the inner frame. I kept it much the same, but used the daisy lace border differently. So I have a second card to go in my box, ready for an unexpected birthday.

2). My second card is very different. I saw this on Facebook and wanted to give it a try because it relies on a feature of my Silhouette Cameo that I have never used before - print and cut. This is where you open up a picture on the design page, mark the corners of the page with registration marks, and print it. Then you trace the outlines in the software, feed the printed image into the machine, and it uses the registration marks to locate the image and cuts it out on your trace lines. That's the theory anyway! 

The file was a free kit from Extreme cards and Papercrafting, and was intended for hand-cutting, but I e-mailed the lady there,  and she happily sent me the silhouette cutting file for which I sent a donation. All the houses, trees, bridges and boats were fitted on to one page and on my first attempt the cut lines did not match up to my printed page. But I decided this was probably because the original file was on American sized paper, not the UK A4 size, and I managed to adjust it and get a good cut. I then went mad and repeated this twice before I forgot how I did it!

Next I cut the inner layer and with some difficulty I managed to get all the little folds going the right way. Then I had fun arranging and rearranging all the little elements on the various tabs until I was happy with the look of it, and glued each one in place. I cut a diagonal slit in this layer to slot in the largest boat at the front. This view from above, gives a better idea of how it works.

I made a base card to fit this, and because it was a non-standard size, I also needed to make an envelope to hold it. The main element of this card is the 'surprise' inside, so I kept the front very simple. I cut a backing paper layer from a magazine give-away, and again used my silhouette to design a large Happy Birthday, and cut it out in a contrasting colour. To give it a bit of sparkle I traced the letters with stickles glitter glue, and added it to some of the stars on the backing paper.  

I was able to use two of these cards for some of the men in my family, and again I have one spare for my box.

3). My third card was for my second eldest son and again I made it with my Cameo, as I find this easier than doing too much stamping and fussy cutting right now. This was a purchased cutting file from 3DCUTS, and it was intended to make a dimensional shadow box. But as I wanted to post mine, I cut the pieces and layered them up flat onto a base card. There are seven layers so it was still quite a sturdy card, but I knew he would like it, so it was worth the postage!

I started by making the background with an ink duster and several shades of Distress inks. I masked the sun after the first layer, and then added a little darker ink at the end. The sea was a snippet of paper I made years ago, to try out some shimmer mists. I went through my snippets boxes and found black and three shades of green to cut the fence, hills and grass clumps, and a small piece of yellow for the sun reflections. Those and the fence were tricky to cut, but I put a new blade in my machine and I was pleased with the way they cut. I thought the sky was a bit empty, so I used an old clip art from my library to make a cutting file for the sea birds, and added them randomly. I might try making the shadow box one day, but I think I have got a good feeling of depth with it as a flat picture too.

This last card will be finding its way to Pixies Snippets Playground, and I had better get thinking about some August birthday cards now.