Christmas Cards

Time to blog my cards now that they should all have been received. I'm intending to start on next year's cards as soon as possible. Considering all the materials I bought I'm ashamed to say I made only 20 cards this year. I spent far too much time experimenting when the cards should have been long posted. That held up all of my other Christmas preparations and I have plenty of other excuses for being disorganised without adding another. It's a lesson well learnt and should stand me in good stead in future. I am resolved to change my approach as well. I'm going to make a stock of backgrounds and other elements during the year so that I am not doing everything from scratch at the last minute.

This was my favourite card this year and I made several with different coloured backgrounds. The stamp is from the Elusive Images Hearth and Home themeplate and the background and decoupage leaves are from the Artylicious Season's Greetings CD. My non crafting family wondered how I'd made the edging. It is in fact a corner punch from Circa Design.

This card came a close second. My favourite version was all shades of blue but sadly, I sent that without taking a photo of it. The background is inked with Adirondack Purple Twilight and Stonewashed and DI Faded Jeans. The stars and snowflakes are from the Elusive images themeplate Angel and Trees. The Winter Wonderland greeting is from Elusive Images Christmas Reflections and the lacy icicles are from Elusive Images Damask Squares. The snowflake centres are Candy Dots from Pebbles Inc. It's hard to tell from the photo but there is subtler printed insert which shows behind the punched edge.


This was a simple card I made early on after buying the Inkadinkado Winter Trails. The little charm seemed made to go with it. The snowflake background is a printed paper from the Artylicious Seasons Greetings CD and the text is from Elusive Images Angel and Trees themeplate.

I stamped this pear tree a lot of times trying to work out where the partridge should go. I think the clue is there somewhere. The stamps are all from Elusive Images Partridge in a Pear Tree themeplate and the background is from Artylicious Seasons Greetings.

This Sarah Kay "Joy of Giving" stamp stole my heart as soon as I saw it and reminded me of my pre teen days when these kind of images were originally in fashion. The cards I made saw my earliest experiments with colouring. This image was 'watercoloured' with inks and markers and a waterbrush but I'd love to try colouring and blending with pencils. The greeting is computer generated and the background paper is Dovecraft.

This card was made with the wreath from the Hearth and Home themeplate. I stamped and embossed in gold detail EP then coloured it with Sakura pens. The background is from a DCWV set.

Merry Christmas

One of the last jobs on my list yesterday was to make some fresh flower decorations. I started with the most gorgeous collection of flowers.

I left them like this in a vase until I had time to use them but I thought they looked so nice that I probably couldn't do anything that would make them look nicer. But I did want them on the table. Around midnight they turned into this.

I also wanted a foliage arrangement for the high shelf in my living room. That's a bit of a tall order as I have nothing usable in the garden and all I could find in the shops was a bough of spuce. So I went scavenging in the dark and found a wealth of treasures. These came from the grounds of a derelict factory. I put them in the bath to have a good long drink and to give the spiders time to run away.

and they turned into this.

You may have noticed that I haven't yet used the lilies and sea hollies. I'm still trying to decide what to do with those.