Christmas Cards

Oh My Goodness, where has December gone?
The kids break up on Friday for the holidays, and thankfully I've not got much left to do/buy/organise/wrap etc, just need to have the big clean and keep the washing up to date and hopefully we're all set.
I'd like to take this opportunity to let everyone know that I won't be sending Christmas Cards this year, all the ones I've made are pretty much on display at The Papeterie, and I've been so busy with other work that I haven't had any time to make some. I also feel it would be a bit of a cop out if I sent shop-bought cards, so this year I've decided to make a donation in lieu to Mrs Murray's Cat & Dog Home in Aberdeen. 
But I did have a couple of commissions to make for one of the other mums at school, giving you a wee bloggy wave Lindsay :)
She wanted me to make cards for her 2 best friends and their families, so here's the first one...

 The tag is removable (see bottom photo), here's a better pic to show all the glamour dust...

 This pic shows the greeting tag removed...

Materials list:
Henry in Christmas Bauble digi stamp from Whiff of Joy
printed onto Diamond White cardstock from The Papeterie
Coloured with Promarkers: Umber, Burgundy, Crimson, Cardinal Red, Burnt Orange, Coral, Sunkissed Pink and Flexmarkers: Amaranth Red, Blue Grey 4, 3, 2, 1
Kraft tag diecut using Tim Holtz Tag & Tie Alterations die and stamped with Hero Arts CL630 Miracle of the Holidays stamp set
red lacquer and white cardstock from The Papeterie
White cardstock embossed with Spellbinders Holiday Magic M-Bossabilities folder
red satin ribbon, snowflakes punched from glitter paper with Martha Stewart snowflake punch, adhesive gemstones

Right, I'd better get on with my online shop for this week, need to get some goodies for the kids christmas parties. Back soon with the other card commission :)
Debz x

M-bossabilites

Dunno about you, but I love the new christmassy M-bossabilites folders from Spellbinders. Now, I'm not in the habit of making A5 sized cards, but hey - a change is as good as a rest. 

 Spellbinders: Holiday Magic M-bossabilities EL-014, Create a Flake Three S4-340
Iced Black, Guardsmen Red, Ice Silver and Diamond White card and paper from The Papeterie

Spellbinders: Winter Wonders M-bossabilites EL-013
Hero Arts: Designer Snowflakes CL622, Miracle of the Holidays CL630
Iced Black, Diamond White card from The Papeterie
I'd like to enter this one into:
ABC Christmas - anything goes

I think the 2nd one has to be my favourite if I'm honest, and nice and simple to mass produce for xmas :)
Remember to enter my Promarker giveaway :)
Debz x

Freedom!

yay, they're back to school today and I've scheduled this post so I can get on with tidying and sorting out my craft desk. I've loads to do this week, new mattress arriving for Scott today, have ordered winter tyres for the car and then it goes in for it's 2nd service plus I have to get the place sorted out before I'm off to the SECC this weekend and leaving my mum in charge of the kids, cat, dog and house for a couple of days.
So in the meantime I'll show you some more samples I made for last weekend at Dundee's new Hobbycraft store...

 Image: The Winters Night - Gorjuss, coloured with promarkers and flexmarkers
Finnish star made with Bo Bunny papers from xmas 2010, MS large and medium snowflake punch
I'd like to enter this one into:
Christmas Inspirations - die cuts/punches
Totally Gorjuss - Pastel Xmas

Image: Fox Gloves - Gorjuss coloured with promarkers and flexmarkers
spellbinders dies were used to make the card blank and to cut the layers
marianne poinsettia die, pearls coloured with promarker. glamour dust
I'd like to enter this one into:
Crafting When We Can - Christmas
Secret Crafter - Wrap Up Warm

Christmas in July

I'm absolutely shattered after yesterday's marathon Christmas in July extravaganza at The Papeterie. Just want to say thankyou to everyone who popped in to see Kath, myself and The Papeterie gang... Charlotte, Rachel and Alanna
I thought I'd share some more of my samples... today I'm sharing some Xmas Sassy's from Sugar Nellie

 Image: Secret Santa from Sugar Nellie, coloured with promarkers and glamour dust
papers are Martha Stewart, MS snowflakes punched from papermania glittered vellum, adhesive pearls from stash, nestabilities


I'd like to enter her into...
Sweet Stampin' - Xmas in July
Fussy n Fancy - Xmas in July

Image: Puppy Love from Sugar Nellie, coloured with promarkers, white card from The Papeterie, embossed with cuttlebug snowflake EF, MS patterned paper, spellbinders snowflake covered in glamour dust

here's her close-up... (for the blonde hair I used Cinnamon, Tan and Buttercup)

I'd like to enter her into
The Sugar Bowl - Kiki's sketch
Crafty Catz - Xmas in July

White Xmas

I'm running a bit late with my card for the Sunday's for Santa FB group, it was Ali's turn to pick the theme and you'll never guess what she chose...... "White Christmas". Now I certainly can't complain about that theme - I've said it before and I'll say it again, Ali totally inspires me when it comes to White on White.
So I finally got a chance to make my card last night, and went flicking through my box of stamped images (which I keep for times when I can't or won't go trawling through my stamp collection. Well I came across this PB image that Kath let me borrow, which then reminded me that I should go get the sketch from PBS Challenge, so......

Image is Penny Black Sweet Snowman, coloured with 3 promarkers!! (Arctic Blue, Sky Blue, Azure)
card blank and greeting are craftwork cards, cardstock is core'dinations (1 panel embossed with cuttlebug snowflake folder, 1 panel, punched with MS border punch, and snowflakes are MS punch), adhesive pearls are papermania


So I'll be entering my sweet snowman into...
Penny Black Saturday - have followed the sketch
Allsorts - recycled (used up offcuts of white and azure card in my scrapbox)
Stamp Something - Winter

Sundays with Santa

Back for week 2 of Pops's Sunday's with Santa and here's another xmas card for this year.
If you don't already know then Pops set up a just for fun group on Facebook where we all make a xmas card every Sunday so we won't have that mad dash to get them all done at the end of the year.

So here's my card for this week

Image: Hero Arts - Sending Holiday Cheer CL464, coloured with promarkers and a little glamour dust
papers are all Bo Bunny Winter Joy and the greeting is craftwork cards

Nice easy peasy quick card.
will be back tomorrow with another card for Letraset

Xmas cards

Thankyou for all the lovely comments you left on my Sugar Nellie Sassy competition entries, unfortunately I haven't made it through to round 3, obviously I'm gutted, but I did my best and the 4 ladies who did get through are fantastically talented. So pop on over to the Sugar Nellie blog and cast your vote to help decide who wins. I don't know any of the 4 ladies who have gone through to round 4 - so I don't feel at all guilty about voting for the person who I think is the most talented and not who I'm friends with or who has begged most for votes :)


Thought I'd share a couple of xmas cards that I made with my MME I Believe kit from Simply Create and the gorgeous Hero Arts Hanging Trees and Hanging Christmas Ornaments stamps...

Hero Arts - Hanging Christmas Ornaments, paper pieced with MME I Believe papers

Hero Arts - Hanging Trees, paper pieced with MME I Believe papers. I embossed some core'dinations chocolate box card and sanded. 

Hero Arts - Hanging Trees, coloured with promarkers, papers are all MME I Believe


All supplies apart from core'dinations chocolate box used were from Simply Create

The very last

As promised, I'm back with the last 3 xmas cards for this year. I was asked by one of the ladies who come to help me with Willow to make cards for her 2 sons and her nephew. She tells me her boys loved them, they were so chuffed and so was she.

After being so inspired by the easel card that we made at Judy's class at Simply Create at the beginning of December I decided to make some more.

 Images are all Santa's from Digistamp Boutique, coloured with promarkers as always. I also added papermania glitterflock to his beard and trim, glamour dust to the snow and sakura clear glaze pen to his belt, boots and Rudolph's nose (you'll see this better in the close up at the bottom)

cardstock is all core'dinations, panels embossed with cuttlebug snowflake folder, patterned paper is Daisy & Dandelion. Ribbon is from Hobbycraft, Martha Stewart and Dovecraft snowflake punches were used with glitter paper. Hobbycrafts adhesive gems. Hero Arts greetings

Here's the close-up...

 So finally, that's the xmas cards all done and dusted and out the door - thank goodness. Lots of people still ended up with bought cards and I'm sorry - but with 3 kids, 2 cats, a dog, a man who is away 2 weeks out of 5, self-employment, a charity to run, well I kinda ran out of time lol

Now I just need to pick up some vouchers for my dad's xmas, take something back to exchange it at Toys R Us, finish the other 5 crackers and I think I'm sorted (fingers crossed) Have been back into my Tesco grocery order umpteen times because I keep remembering things I'll need, and it gets delivered on Wednesday.

Speak to you tomorrow, but be warned - I might not be in the best of humours, its Graham's last day at home.

The Final 2

I promise, this is the last 2 xmas cards I made. I do still have to show you the 3 I made for a customer (will keep them til Monday) but tomorrow is Pepsi Update day.

These 2 easel cards are for 2 local fabulous ladies, they'll know who they are when they get them, if they haven't already arrived.

 The image is Snowflake from Sugar Nellie, coloured with promarkers, Caramel, Cinnamon, Cocoa, Walnut, Peach, Blush, Pastel yellow and Mustard.

Cardstock is all Core'dinations, embossed panel is the cuttlebug snowflakes folder

Greeting is Hero Arts, the ribbon is from a chocolate box I got a couple of xmas's ago and half-pearls from Kaiserkraft. 

 Image is Snowflake from Sugar Nellie again, coloured with promarkers: Blush, Caramel & Walnut, Marsh Green and Olive Green, Ruby & Burgundy

Cardstock is Papermania and core'dinations, paper is Fancy Pants, snowflakes are cut with Martha Stewart snowflake punch and covered in  glamour dust, greeting is Hero Arts, half pearls are Kaiserkraft and ribbon is from my stash.

Last Day of School - argh!!

Well, this is the start of chaos and mayhem for me - Graham goes away the day before xmas eve and the kids finish school this afternoon.

I've already shown you the teachers gifts I made,  so I thought I'd show you the quick teachers' cards I made the other day.

 

  

 The image is Teacher Anya from The Greeting Farm (many thanks once again Natalie for stamping all of those up for me) Coloured with promarkers

The paper is Fancy Pants from Simply Create, the snowflakes were cut from scraps of card and Daisy & Dandelion xmas paper. The mats behind the image are D&D xmas paper and SU Kraft card, inked up with Distress Ink. The ribbon was from Hobbycraft and the greetings are Kanban.

 Tomorrow I'll be sharing the last 2 of the xmas cards I made for crafty buddies

Cards for playgroup staff

OK I think I'm nearly done now, got cracking yesterday and did the 4 playgroup staff's cards and gifts. I went for the easy option with the gifts and just plonked a bath lily and a bodyshop miniature into a cello bag, tied the top with a ribbon and added a tag. So I didn't bother to photograph them.
Here's the quickie cards I made for Faith's playgroup staff...

 For the first 2 I used the "Snowflake" image from Sugar Nellie and coloured her with promarkers (the first one is Ice Grey 1-5, and the second one is Orchid, Purple, Apple and Blush)
The paper is Craft House that I got at Simply Create, the glitter paper mats are from Hobbycraft, Martha Stewart snowflake punchies and Craftwork Cards card candy

 The 2nd pair of cards - I have used a couple of Santa's from Sally-Ann at DigiStamp Boutique - so these are a couple of GDT cards.
Coloured with promarkers: Ruby/Burgundy for all the red bits, Caramel and Cocoa for all the brown bits and Arctic Blue for the snowy bits
I added Papermania glitter flock to Santa's beard and suit trim, and glamour dust to the snow. I also covered his boots and belt with a couple of coats of sakura clear glaze pen.
The red and green card are Core'dinations, the papers are Daisy & Dandelion, Craftwork Cards card candy and Kanban greeting. (I hand doodled the greeting on the 1st Santa card)

Family Xmas cards

Well, I'm just not going to get all my xmas cards made this year so I'm concentrating on close family and friends. To make my life a bit easier we got some photo's taken of the 3 kids and I decided to use them for family xmas cards this year - makes it all a bit quicker and easier really, so here's a batch I made this week...

 I made them all a little different - I'd be bored to tears making them all the same. And used a selection of Dovecraft, DCWV, Daisy & Dandelion and CraftHouse papers. All card for mats was either gemstone or plain core'dinations. I used a selection of Martha Stewart Around the Page punches, Kanban greetings, Martha Stewart snowflake punches, craftwork cards card candy and an X-cut corner rounder punch.

Seeing as I purchase the pic on CD with the copyright waiver, I can show you the actual picture I used.

 and here's them in black and white - I particularly like this one

Judy's Class

Well, I'm not completely over the lurgy yet, but am feeling far more human than I did at the weekend. So I've finally managed to get around to showing you what we were doing at Judy's Winter Sing Song class at Simply Create on Saturday.

First we made an easel card - I have seen loads of these on other crafters blogs and had no idea how easy they really were. Of course Judy and Jacqui had everything pre- cut and scored for us which takes a lot of the work out of it too :)

The papers are Winter Song by SEI  (thanks for the reminder Kath x)

Then we made a wee gift box...

Finally we made another 6x6 card.. but I didn't have enough time to finish it off, or make the tag which was the 4th thing we were to make, but I took home all the materials for it and will get it done this week sometime and I think I might use it as a card topper.

 you can see I didn't quite finish colouring her in.

The images are all Gorjuss Girls from Sugar Nellie, and they were all coloured with promarkers.

Speaking of which, Jacqui has asked me to teach a ProMarker class at Simply Create in the New Year - so look out for more news of that soon.