Snowflake Christmas Card

Every year Christmas manages to sneak up on me! You'd think by now I'd have cottoned on, but come the beginning of December I'm always astounded by how close the big day is.  I have managed to make a few Christmas cards though.

This card is based on an old design that I made with white and Kraft card.  The snowflake is actually a doily (Couture Creations Cecily Doily), but I thought that it looked very much like a snowflake and would look great against a snowy background.

I cut the doily in half and placed each half at the top and bottom of the card.  I added a few pearls to some of the circles within the doily for a bit of extra prettiness.  The "Merry Christmas" sentiment is from another Couture Creations set - Merry Layered Stars.

This design, although simple does take a bit of time to complete because of adding small dots of glue to the doily die cut and sticking on the pearls, but could easily be modified to make it quickly reproducible.

• At first I created the background using paint splatters on blue card, but to save time I used a graphics program to create my snowy background. Download it here. 
• Use a double sided adhesive sheet with the doily die cut or a brayer to apply the glue to save time
• Use self-adhesive pearls or pearl enamel drops (much less fiddly than loose pearls).

I have an extra Cecily Doily and Merry Layered Stars set on eBay if you'd like to recreate this card:

Get the Cecily Doily Die
Get the Merry Layered Stars Die Set

Redbubble Holiday Card Design Challenge

A few weeks ago Redbubble hosted a series of design challenges and I decided to enter.  The brief for Week 1 was to create a vintage-inspired card or pattern artwork.  This was my submission:

"Eat, Drink & Get Hammered" Greetings Card

...and I was chosen as a runner-up!  You can read the post on the Redbubble blog here.  Or better yet, head over to my Redbubble listing and take a closer look.  Buy multiple greetings cards (they don't all have to be the same) and get a discount of up to 50%.

This post contains affiliate links.  If you click on a link and subsequently make a purchase I will receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Freebie Friday - So Special Card Front

This post contains affiliate links which means that if you follow the links and then make a purchase I will receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

I'm a bit of a craft supply junkie - whether it's physical or digital products my house and my hard drive are chock full with supplies that I love, but hardly ever use, but shopping for craft supplies is only half the fun.  There's joy to be found in the making too, so I'm making a concerted effort to use what I've got.

A little while ago I downloaded the graphics pack 'Herbaceous Greens'.   It is a set of watercolour greenery - branches, foliage and individual leaves - as well as 9 seamless patterns.  I used it to create this lovely A6 card front, which you can download for free from here (personal use only please):

You Are So Special A6 card front - Free Download

If you like the look of the set you can get the complete pack for just $1 (until the end of October) from The Hungry Jpeg.

DIY Decoupage

If you read this blog then you'll have noticed that I'm partial to downloading graphics and fonts.   Well, with all the weekly freebies available and the occasional purchase I've amassed a LOAD of digital images and graphics.  Rather than leave them to gather cyberdust I decided to try my hand at creating my own decoupage. 

Working from the base image of a floral corner I removed parts of the image in stages; the base layer had the flower arrangement with leaves, for the second layer I deleted the leaves, for the third layer I deleted more of the flowers and for the final layer only a single flower remained.  I looked at where the elements overlapped as a guide to creating the layers.  My Brother Scan N Cut made quick work of cutting out the layers.

It makes a really pretty card with the arrangements placed in opposite corners and finished off with a simple, stamped sentiment.  Preparing the images did take a little time, but now that it's done I can achieve the same result again easily as well as being able to resize the elements to suit different projects.  This is something I'd definitely try again with other images of floral arrangements.

Quick and Easy Hanging Heart

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My friend came to me a few days ago to ask for my help to make a last minute teacher gift.  She requested a hanging heart that said "Athrawes gorau" (Best Teacher in Welsh) and personalised with the teacher's name and her son's name and featuring the colour purple.  

To make the heart I cut five hearts from white 300gsm cardstock, and one from Kraft card.  I punched holes in each of the curves at the top of the heart then stuck all the layers together using PVA glue 

with the Kraft heart at the back.  (I used my ScanNCut to cut the hearts but a die would also work.  If you don't have a die cutter or cutting machine I recommend using a square or a rectangle.)  To prevent the stack from warping I put it under a heavy stack of books as it dried.  When dry it feels very sturdy - like chipboard.

Meanwhile I found some pretty digital background paper and in a graphics program I used the heart template as a guide to place the text before cutting it out with the ScanNCut and sticking it to the top of the heart stack.  Incidentally the fonts that I used for the teacher's name and the sentiment are Old Emma Decorative and King Basil (which I love).

To finish I printed out some flower and leaf graphics, cut them out and added them to the heart.  It's not very clear from the photograph, but I printed three of each flower, cut each one gradually smaller than the last and then layered them up to add some dimension and make them more interesting.  I threaded some thick string through the holes to create the hanger.

Download free floral graphics here and here.

Bloom and Grow - Free Backing Papers

I love the idea of designing my own backing papers, so, with a little help from Daisytrail and CraftArtist 2 Professional, I did just that.  I used the Bright Blooms free digikit to create a set of 6 x A4 backing papers in soft shades, perfect for Spring.

  

  

  

As the true test of a backing paper is its usability, I had fun being my own design team and made a set of cards to show the papers off.  They work really nicely together.  Download the papers and use them in your own projects, then leave a link to your creations in the comments 😊.

Digital Geometric Shards

Remember the geometric pattern card that I created a few posts ago?  Well, I liked it so much that I decided to create a digital version of it using the CraftArtist2 Professional software.  I love the idea of creating products using my own designs so on a whim last year I opened up a shop on Society6 (it's called Merry Makewell Designs) and uploaded my digital rendition of the card design.  I originally tried to reproduce the card faithfully, but the combination of teal and purple didn't really work digitally for some reason, so I used a grey outline instead.  I also made a pastel version using a white outline.

Here they are as notebooks:

Purple Shards notebook

Pastel Shards - Notebook

 I've also added the design to a whole range of other products, like tote bags, phone cases, laptop sleeves, pouches, mugs, wall hangings and even shower curtains.  I think that they look pretty good.

If you have a chance go and take a closer look.

The Paper Players #281 - Cats and Dogs

This week on The Paper Players the theme is "Raining Cats & Dogs" - use a cat or dog on your card.

I've put together another digital creation:

I love CraftArtist.  It's such a powerful program considering that it was designed for hobby crafters and scrapbookers.  I didn't have any actual images of cats or dogs, but there are some animal punches that come with the program so I punched out the cats and dogs from various patterned papers and added a black outline to help lift them off the background.  I did the same for the bench.  I really couldn't think of an appropriate sentiment, but it looks like all the animals are hanging out so in the end I went with "Let's Get Together".