A quick dozen (almost) for my Christmas card stash.

Once again feeling I am falling behind with my Christmas card collection, I decided I needed to do a run of a something fairly straightforward, so here is what I made.

The design, including the script, is a cutting file from Silhouette cameo library, which I am sure I bought from the Silhouette store a while ago.  I resized it for a 12cm square card and fitted it six times onto cutting mat. Then I cut it from black vinyl. While the machine was set up I cut the six images again and set about weeding them. This is the tedious job of removing all the unwanted areas using a pricking tool, which can be difficult with the tiny pieces inside the letters 'e' and 'd' etc. However this design didn't prove to be too time consuming so I soon had my cuts all ready to go on cards.

I trawled through my Christmas snippets box and found a range of suitable designs for the backing papers, so  I cut the squares out and used transfer tape to lift each image from its backing paper and position it onto one of the squares.

Next I cut a mat for each one from various colours of the glitter card I mentioned in my previous post.

I was about to cut lots of base cards from white, thinking that this is an extravagant size card to make as you can only cut one card from each A4 sheet, when I remembered the huge stash of precut cards and envelopes still lurking in a bottom cupboard. So I had a look and sure enough, there was a whole box of 12cm cards in a wide range of colours. Amazingly I found one that was a perfect match for every one of my cards so I did a little happy dance and got them all mounted up, and I am really pleased with them. These cards and envelopes must be at least twelve years old, so I am really glad to be making use of some of them.

The more alert of you will notice that there are only eleven (almost a dozen) cards here. I did cut twelve but one didn't make it through the weeding-transfer process so I had to discard it. But still, eleven cards in one evening is a good result.

Now I am rushing off to Pixie's Snippets Playground to join in the fun before the gates are closed for this week.

September Rudolph day Challenge

Goodness; is it really the 25th already?! Rudolph nearly caught me out this month but fortunately I still had four of my little LOTV digi images ready to make into cards.

I printed the image four times and coloured them all in the same way with copic markers, just changing the colour for the little bird house.

I have been making a lot of 17 x 11.5 cm cards, which is sort of the European version of A6. They have just a little bit more space to work in and I really like them. (Plus they are exactly one half of a sheet card from the blocks I buy at Lidl's!).

However I have run out of the matching envelopes, and the shop where I buy them had restocked with the ones for A6 cards, so I have gone back to the smaller size for these.

The image includes a narrow, slightly rough edged border, so I decided to make white base cards and use my pens to colour the image border, and then distress the edges of my backing paper to match them, rather than cutting a mat for it.

So I started with two red ones. I was looking for some backing paper and found a small piece left over from an old papermania 6 x6 block, that I have mostly used up now. It was just right for these cards so I cut a tile from my snippet, and used a graphics programme to seamlessly cover an A4 sheet of paper, and printed it out.

I then did the same for the other two using green for the border.

The snowflake border is cut with a Joanna Sheen signature die, using some pretty, glitter card. This is lovely and sparkly IRL, but quite soft and smooth to touch and it die cuts beautifully. I can buy it in about eight different colours from our local 'Chinese bazaar'. It comes in huge sheets, possibly A2 for just 45 cents a sheet, so I thought I had better try to use some. The sentiment is one that turned up when I was sorting my stamps out recently and I am sorry, it had lost its packaging so I don't know the manufacturer.

So that is another four cards for my stash, which is coming along quite nicely. I have another two weeks out with visitors and visiting, so I still need to do one big run of something simple. The rate this year is flying by, I'll soon be posting the overseas ones.

But for now I will pop over to Scraps of Life by scrappymo, and enter this in the September Rudolph Day Challenge.

More Lili of the Valley - DL style

A few weeks ago I said I had printed out a selection of images bought from the new Lili of the Valley Christmas range of digistamps. I was slowed down because we had several lovely visits from our family in UK, but I have finally managed to colour them, and most of them are now cards.

I am trying to use up some very old items of stash, and among these I found a pack of pastel coloured DL cards which were just perfect for these images. There are three sets so here goes.

1). Christmas feasting.

I thought this was such a cute image. I printed three of them and coloured them with copic markers. Then I chose three base cards and routed around in my Christmas snippets to find oddments of paper and trims to go with each one. So they are basically the same with different colours for their scarves and base cards, and different embellishments.

2). Nativity

These little images were sold as a Nativity trio, but I will let you into a little secret. I didn't like the centre one because the stable was empty. Now for me the whole point of the Christmas story is that there was a very special baby in the stable, so I put one in. I don't normally adapt digistamps, but I felt I had to do this. Here are the before and after pictures.

I again coloured the images with copic markers except for one. Can you spot the difference in my photo? My sister does beautiful colouring with coloursoft pencils, and as I have a lovely set of these, I thought I should try them again, so I used them for my first set. But I was not happy with the result. My arthritic hands struggle to hold a pen for long enough for me to sign my name, so I really struggled with this. Copic markers are my go-to colouring tools and they only need such a light touch, that I find them much easier to handle. 

I made backing papers using ink dusters and distressed inks, and die cut gold mirri-card mats for the images. The sentiments were printed on the computer. I made a set of five all the same

3).Angels from the realms of glory!

Another cute image. LOTV does them so well. Aren't they truly angelic? I found I could get four of these on an A4 sheet of paper, so that's what I did. I used - you guessed it - copic markers to colour them -  and for speed I used the same pens for each one. I added some Leonie Pujol glitter ink to the wings and halos.

The image was a bit too small for the DL cards, but I was determined to use them up so I chose two pale yellow ones, and two peach ones, and found some lilac off-cuts that went well with both colours. I cut a mat for each image, and from the bit that is hidden behind the picture, I cut the sentiments using Joanna Sheen dies. I also used a Joanna Sheen Signature die - starry border - along the lower edge of each mat, and used the cut out stars to fill in between the words.

So there I have it; another ten cards to add to my collection. According to my plan, I am about where I hoped to be by the end of June! But that is still an improvement on my total a few weeks ago.

I am entering the first two  in the ABC Christmas Challenge where the criteria is S for sketch/T for trio. I didn't manage to match them to a sketch but they both show a trio.

All three cards are going over to Pixie's Snippets Playground and also to 

The Merry Christmas Challenge #33 where Anything Goes as long as it is Christmas.