Rudolph Day Challenge # April

The 25th of each month certainly comes around fast, but here it is again bringing with it the April Rudolph Day Challenge.

As I said last month, I am not sure I will need that many cards this year, so once again I have refrained from 'batch making', settling for just two, but both of these could easily be made again if needed.

I am busy working on a big craft project so I wanted fairly quick cards to make for this challenge and turned again to my design library in my Silhouette Cameo software. The library is not good at labelling files properly so I am unsure where either of these files came from. I believe one was a die, maybe from a magazine, that I put into my silhouette so that I could resize it. And the other - I just don't know.

Anyway, I cut them out and mounted them onto base cards cut from my stash of plain card. The first design was cut from my last snippet of a favourite paper that I have had for at least 15 years. It is ivory with gold marbling on it, but sadly it is now all gone, and is no longer produced so I cannot replace it. The word 'Rejoice' was another file from my silhouette library.

The second design was simple black card, and the lettering is black vinyl. I was pleased at how well the script cut. Before adding the Bethlehem image I backed it with some gold heavy vellum that I was given at the NEC show when I bought my first cutting machine - a Craft Robo in around 1998 perhaps! It cuts so cleanly, so they put a big pile of it in the starter pack that came with the machine if you bought it at the show. It just added some interest to my scene. I used some similar gold pearl paper for the stars, and used transfer tape to lift it all from the cutting mat and place it on the 13.5cm square cream card.

So I will link up with Scraps of Life by ScrappyMo, and go back to my other project.

Happy Rudolph Day everyone.

Going Green for Rudolph Day #March 2021

It soon comes around doesn't it? But here we are again on 25th of the month, or as we like to call it, Rudolph Day.

Unfortunately my title this month does not refer to an environmentally friendly card, but rather to the colour I used, starting with a dark green, 15cm base card. I added a mat of pale cream and stamped the lovely 'Indigo blu' bauble garland in Memento olive grove. Looking back through my blog history, I see it is around eight years since I last used this stamp, so it deserved another inking.

The tree is a cutting file I bought recently from an Etsy store - CreativeFabrica. It was a faulty file but I was able to make it usable with the png files instead of the svgs. The first layer was cut from the same green card as the base card, and then I added the second layer from a paler green card. I knew the top layer would be a bit tricky, partly because I has down-sized the file to fit my space, so I decided to cut it from gold metallic vinyl which cuts better than card for intricate designs. It was a bit of a chore to weed out the unwanted parts, and then I had to carefully align it with the underneath layers, but I liked how it turned out. I used some of the cut-out stars randomly on the image. (I don't like waste!).

Finally I used the same ink pad to stamp the sentiment which came from a Chocolate Baroque set. I have always liked it, and the font it uses, and it was a perfect fit for the corner of my card.

So there we have it, my March entry for the Rudolph Day Challenge. I am also entering it in the ABC Christmas Challenge # F for Fir tree and/or G for Garland.

Recycling for the Rudolf Day Challenge #February

 As I said last month, my January post for this challenge is usually cards I have made by recycling some that I have received, but this year I didn't get them made in time, so here are some now. I only recycle shop-bought cards, not hand-made ones as that wouldn't seem right, and I always try to make them as different as possible from the original, so that I feel I can say I have honestly crafted them myself.

Robins seemed to feature quite prominently this year. but most were just a big robin filling the card front, and they don't lend themselves to re-using, but smaller ones can be cut , framed, and mounted in a variety of ways. So here is my first one, along with some doves, a couple of church choirs, and a warm home scene, which worked very well.

Of course there were far fewer cards sent this year because of the Covid virus, but I had a nice one from one of my sons, again featuring robins, which seemed to have a lot of potential. So I started by scanning it into my computer.

The centre robin didn't fit into any of my plans so I die cut the pair on the right, and the left hand one on its own, and made these two cards with them.

I do like to add a bit of bling to my Christmas cards so all the snowflakes are cut from white glitter card and the gems are deep blue. There is also some glitter glue dotted on the robins as snow.

I have used oddments of card from my stash, and a variety of embossing folders and dies to make these cards, so I am not listing them all here, but if anyone wants to know what any of them are, do drop me a message and I will do my best to let you know.

When I am not under any pressure to produce a card by a given date, I sometimes like to just play around, designing new cutting files for my Silhouette machine, and using Youtube videos to learn how to get more from Adobe Photoshop.

So I decided to have a play and practise some of the skills I am trying to master in Photoshop. So I chose a sheet of scrapbook paper from a digital kit.

Then I cropped the line of robins I used above,  to just include the three on the right and added them to the paper. Next I tried a new trick I have discovered to blend a photo into a background without leaving hard lines around it. 

I cropped it down and resized it  to fit the front of a B6 card (11.5 x 17cm), and printed it out twice.

It looked unfinished so I turned to my favourite Silhouette cameo machine and designed a wavy line of script similar to the original, plus a larger sentiment that seemed to fit, and cut them both from dark red vinyl. The tiny print was fiddly to do, and I had to be very careful weeding out the tiny ares between the letters, without losing any of  them. I used transfer tape to add the script and the sentiment to the cards, and finished them off with some glitter glue snow. It took me a while to do all this, but it was good practice and I have two more cards for me stash.

I was quite pleased with how they turned out, glad that I had mastered the blending technique, and, of course, I now have the digital card front and cutting files on my computer, so I could replicate them any time if I want to.

So now it is time to link up with the Rudolph Day challenge for February, on Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo, and go over to see what everyone else has made.

If you have started making Christmas cards already, why not join in the fun.

Rudolph day Challenge 2021# January

Well it has been a strange year, and I didn't get around to entering the extra challenge in December for anyone who had posted every month, although I did qualify. But I am going to try to do it again this year so here is my first card of 2021.

I have cased a card made by Liz Smith. I can't give you a link as it was on a closed group which I am a member of. Her's was done using a robin image.

This uses a metal stencil from Sweet Poppy stencils. I am not very clever with stencils but I was advised to try some  Sweet Poppy brushes, (almost identical to  much cheaper make-up brushes available from Amazon), and they did make a huge difference.

I needed to cut a circle frame the exact size of the stencil first to stamp my image in - reindeer and trees by Chocolate Baroque - and then a mask for the image and also the moon, while I dusted DI over the entire stencil.

I wasn't happy with the stamped image so I added some extra colour using a water brush and DI ink.

I stencilled two little trees in the bottom corner to hide a smudge of ink!

The sentiment is from a set by Hero Arts, stamped with Distress Oxide evergreen bough, and I added two tiny stencilled snow flakes in the same colour. I added a little glitter glue to the snowflakes and trees and around the deer's feet.

It was a bit of a fuss to do, but I think I'll be trying it again with a different, and perhaps a bit smaller, image.

So I'll link this up with the Rudolph Day Challenge over at Scraps of Life with Scrappy Mo. I hope it is the start of a good year of Christmas card making.

As the stencil was new at the end of last year, and inked for the first time, I am also linking this to the NEBUS Challenge. (Never Before Used)

Rudolph Day Challenge # November

Well here we are at our last Rudolph Day Challenge of 2020. It has stood me in good stead and I have sufficient cards for this year without a panic making session now. But I have, of course, saved a couple for this challenge, and for these I chose a Layered Merry Christmas cutting file that I bought from Debs Cards Studio, etsy shop.

Her design was in red and green, but I decided to make my first one in less traditional colours, and used pale blue and deep purple. The top flower layer was tricky to cut, and even with a new blade in my Silhouette cameo, it didn't quite cut cleanly, but I managed to use my snips to tidy up any corners that needed it. I used a 12"x12" sheet of blue card for the base and top layer, and off cuts of purple and white for the two in-between layers. At the last minute I hand cut some holographic silver paper to go behind the flowers, but it doesn't really show in the picture.

I then cut it again using red and green, and this time I added red foil on top of the largest flower.

I added some silver glitter glue to the flower centres on the blue card, and yellow glitter glue to the red flowers.

As they went together fairly easily I made one more of each colour way, with the only difference being that I put some gold paper behind the red flowers, instead of red on top of them. So I have four more cards for my stash, and I think they are the last for this year.

So I will link this up to Rudolph Day Challenge # November on Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo, and hopefully we will be back to do it all again next year.

Rudolph Day Challenge#October

My word, the 25th of each month sure comes around fast. I will soon have enough Christmas cards for this year, but I haven't done much crafting just lately so I wanted a fairly simple card for this challenge and I chose a cutting file I purchased from The Dreaming tree at 3dsvgcuts. 

I used my Silhouette cameo machine to resize it a bit and used mostly off cuts for the layers. There are four layers to the central panel and three to each side panel so it is a fairly heavy card and will most likely be used for one of my hand-delivered cards rather than a posted one. I always have plenty of cream off cuts, so the side panels were easy enough to find pieces for.(They look white in the photo but are in fact cream). For the background I used a piece of heavy card from an old Hunkydory set. More offcuts of black and brown made the other layers. 

The side panels are a white layer first, which is used to attach them to the back panel, and then a cream layer with the star cut outs added to the front. The script was cut from some offcuts of gold, paper-backed foil, which surprised me by actually cut very well, and because I didn't like the white stars peeping through the cut outs, I added more little scraps of the gold behind each group before gluing the two layers together.

Although there was a lot of cutting to do, and that is always a bit hit and miss with my temperamental machine, this time it went quite well, so while the machine was set up, I cut a second set. This time my only suitable background off-cut was half a piece of paper I printed ages ago, on standard printer paper so I needed to glue it to a stiff card back to make it stable enough. (No pun intended).

I was pleased with the end results so I may make a few more if I find I am short of any at the last minute.

Now I will link up with Rudolph day Challenge#October at Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo. 

And as I have used so many snippets for these cards I will also link up over on Pixie's Snippets Playground.

A wish for Peace on Rudolph Day#September

Well for once I only have a single card to show this month. It has been too hot in my craft room in the afternoons for me to do much crafting, and I needed a few birthday cards more urgently than Christmas ones. But here is today's offering.

I bought the Heartfelt Creations stamp recently in a sale bin of an online store. Having stamped it I tried to find a die-cut frame that it would fit into, and eventually came up with these. I think the plain ones are from a Spellbinders set - labels 7 and the red layer is the matching fancy set, but I can't be sure as I seem to have lost their information card. The outer frame is cut from gold glitter card.

 

I coloured the image with alcohol ink markers, and mounted up the three layers.

 

I cut the 15cm base card from an A4 sheet of heavy white card and added the gold dots border top and bottom using my Foil Press. I love the effects you can get with this machine but don't find it easy to use. Even with no plates in my cutting machine, the foil press stamp almost cuts through the card. But I like the dots and want to try using them again in silver on a dark base card.

I used 1mm foam pads to mount the topper centrally and there we have it. A relatively easy and quick card to make. I may do some more, but with several of my social groups looking unlikely to restart before Christmas, I will not need so many cards this year. (As we live in rural Spain, we do not know the addresses of many of our group members, and some have no postal address and rely on sharing a box on a panel at the end of the street, so unless I see them in person, I am not likely to get a card to them). But I will probably make a few more yet. There is always the next Christmas to use them!

I will now link up with Rudolph Day Challenge# September and see what everyone else has made.

How far is it to Bethlehem? :Rudolph day Challenge#August 2020

Well here we are again at the 25th of the month so it is time to show a Christmas make.

Last month Woodware released their Christmas stamps and although I am trying not to buy too much new these days, one stamp really caught my eye. Apparently everyone else liked it too as it sold out on the first day! So I signed up to be notified when it came back into stock and before long I got my one through the post. It is not a stamp you can do an awful lot with, but I immediately thought of a little stack of DL cards that have been in my stash for at least 15 years! (I know  I brought them with me when I moved out to Spain nearly 12 years ago).

So I dug those out and found I still had a few in pastel shades of cream, blue, green and lilac. So I stamped my image a dozen times, and added  a light dusting of colour all over it, with a yellow area around the star. Then I distressed the edges and rummaged through my snippets box to find matching colours to mat the images.

I used three of each of the base colours from my DL cards, and had no trouble finding three blue and three purple mats. I had some pieces of a jade green which went well with the green cards, but I didn't like yellow mats for the cream cards so I used shades of orange/brown.

Once they were all mounted up I used a little matching colour on the stable scenes, and used a gold pigment pen on all the domed roofs. Finally some gold glitter glue on the star gave them that bit of Christmas sparkle.

Inside I used a sentiment stamp which came with the main image, and a small stable digistamp from my library, with a simple greeting on the other side. 

So now I have another set of 12 cards to add to my stash, three each of these four colourways. (The card on the right is pastel green though it looks like another cream one in the picture).

Now I will link them up with Rudolph Day Challenge #August at Scraps of life by Scrappy Mo.