A Joyful Rudolph Day.

Well the 25th has crept up on us again. Fortunately I made my cards a week or so ago, but I have only just got to the computer to post them.

I am still looking for designs that don't require too much colouring and hand-cutting as my arms continue to be a problem, so I went through my Silhouette Cameo library looking for a file I haven't used before, and came across the cutting file for this word Joy.

I had some heavyweight dark red, pearlised paper that I knew would cut well, so I used that. I tried it on a few cards and decided it looked best on plain cream, so i used that to make the base card.

To 'ground' the word I used the off cuts of the red with a Signature die to cut the starry border. I collected all the little stars that came from this, and dotted them randomly around the image. Then I used another die - Memory box I think but I am not sure - to cut a star of Bethlehem from gold mirri card, and glued it over the star in the original image.

Because  this used half an A4 sheet of the red paper, I cut it a second time from the other half, and made another card the same. Then I went through my stash and found similar pearl, non-fibre paper in silver, pewter, and stone, so I cut two sets from each of these. I paired up the silver with turquoise card, the pewter with mid-blue card and the stone with dark red, and made them up in the same way, so I have a useful set of eight cards, that really show why Christmas is the season of Joy.

So I will pop over to the Rudolph Day Challenge at Scraps of Life by Scrappymo, to link this up. Then I have another card to make before tomorrow!

A lavender butterfly for Challenge #62

All Summer I have been trying to get a card made for the Butterfly Challenge, but the heat sapped my energy and I never made the deadlines. But this month I am in by the skin of my teeth. The challenge was of course to use a butterfly in our design, but with the option of also using L for letters, and/or L for Lavender.

I need a card for an eightieth birthday this week, so this is what I made.

I bought the files from Craftsuprint, and they included cutting files for the card base, a background sheet, the lattice layer and the lace border. I cut it using my silhouette cameo. I knew it would be a challenge to cut the lattice and the lace as they are quite intricate designs, but I found a small piece of pearlised card in lavender that was just big enough, and when I had played around with the settings a bit,  I managed to cut the lattice. The lace cut quite well with some white pearl-all-through paper.This has no fibres so always cuts well.

Initially I cut the background layer from a snippet of pretty lavender and gold scrapbook paper, but I felt it got lost behind the lattice so I didn't use it. The base cut easily from white card, and this showed through the lattice better than the patterned paper.

There was a small piece at the top of the lace border that 'snagged' in the cutter, so I covered this with a label cut round the outside of a die from Sue Wilson's Greek islands-Kefalonia set. The die itself was used to cut the white panel with a computer generated sentiment - (L for letters).

Using the backing paper I had originally cut for the bottom layer of my design, I stamped the Leane Creatief Doodle Butterfly (won as a prize in an earlier Butterfly challenge), and coloured the frame lines with a dark lavender copic marker. I then glued it to a second piece of the BP so it was patterned on both sides, and fussy cut it. I used silicone glue to attach it to the card with its wings slightly raised. 

From the left over lavender card I punched out some tiny butterflies to decorate the sentiment label, and added some sparkle with glitter glue to the tips of the butterfly wings, and the numbers 80.

So I shall now link this to Mrs A's Butterfly Challenge #62 and also, as I haven't dropped by to play for a while, I am linking to Pixie's Snippets Playground#247.