Up and running for the first Rudolph Day Challenge of 2018

For those who don't know, Rudolph day is the 25th of each month, when we are encouraged to make a card, or other Christmas related item, to help us build a stash and avoid a panic at the end of the year.

I have been out of action for best part of a month with the dreaded cold virus, but I am beginning to feel 'human' again, so I wanted to find my mojo and get some crafting done. So here is the first card I made.

Last year I fell woefully behind my target of 12 Christmas cards each month, and I want to do a bit better this year. I needed something fairly straight forward to get me started, so I browsed some fairly old craft CDs, really to see whether I need to keep them or pass them on to someone who would make better use of them, and I came across one called Romany Christmas, which I have never used. The images on it are sort of 'folk art', very simple and muted. There were some sheets of toppers, with six designs to a page so I printed off two each of two pages. The images ranged from robins to Christmas trees, from puddings to snowmen, and even old Rudolph himself. Here is another one made into a card. Very simple but quite effective.

Because of the type of images they were, I felt it would spoil them to add too much embellishment to them, so I found various pre-cut cards from my stash, and several dies for frames. Then I decided which shape worked best for each image and cut them out with a corresponding mat.

Then I used snippets of patterned paper from my Christmas offcuts box, digi scrapbook papers sized down to a fit a square card, and printed off some of the matching papers from the CD, and between all of those I made a backing paper for each card and added the relevant topper.

Then I used oddments of sticky ribbon, die cut lace borders, and elements salvaged from old Christmas cards (I found a bag of these from years ago in one of my scrap boxes!) to add some interest.

I used my misti to position a sentiment stamp on each design and stamped them.

So now I have a collection of 25 cards! WOW. That is a great start to my collection for this year. Just in case you don't believe me...

Sorry the photos are a bit dark. This may be January, but we have unseasonably bright sunshine in the mornings here this month. I am not complaining, but it makes photographing cards quite difficult.

So I will link these up to Scraps of Life by scrappymo, for the Rudolph day challenge.

I won't keep up the momentum of twenty-four cards every month, but I do hope to get some smaller runs done, so I can stay on target this year.

Roses in December

A long time ago, when my Mum died and I had the task of sorting out some of her papers, I found a little text that has stuck in my mind ever since. It read "God gave us our memories that we might have roses in December". These days we hardly need our memories for that, as roses seem to bloom most months, and I have had a flower in my garden at Christmas. But when I needed three cards for December birthdays I remembered the text and I decided to make them using my newest Altenew set of rose stamps and dies. I have had their small roses set for a while, but they have now released a single larger bloom and I love it. So here is the first card I made.

There are six layer stamps for the flower and four for the leaves, enabling you to build up the colours to give a very realistic image. Fortunately I used to have a passion for collecting complete sets of ink-pads, and although I don't use a lot of the different coloured ones now, I was able to find six toning shades of pink for my flower. So I stamped my flower once - my Misti stamp positioner, or a similar one, is essential for aligning the layers of these flowers - and the leaves twice, and cut them out with the corresponding dies. 

The background is a white card blank lightly dusted with pink distress inks. I then used a leaf stencil with Prima Art Alchemy acrylic paint in Rose Gold. I bought this new recently and wanted to try it. It is so pretty, and ideal for adding some gentle shimmer to my card.

I sorted through my green snippets for a piece large enough to cut out the mat using another new purchase - a die by Gina Marie designs. I put them all together and cut a sentiment with another green snippet using my Silhouette cameo and Desire pro font.

I was pleased with this card, so I decided to repeat it using other roses that I had stamped in various colourways when I was first playing with the set. So I ended up with four card in all.

I used white snippets to stamp all the flowers and leaves, and a variety of plain and patterned snippets for the backgrounds, mats and sentiments. I like the darker rose best, but prefer the backing of the first one, but they have all been sent now so I guess I could be trying out some more!

But first I will hop over to Pixie's Snippets Playground with these. It is a while since I made them, but they have not been shown yet. I have been really poorly with a cold virus ever since Christmas, so I have not been down in my chilly craft room very much. But I am trying to get working again now, so hopefully I will have something more recent to show for my next post.