Watercolor Holly Christmas cards

Still using my well loved old rubber stamps, I created some Holly cards for Christmas.  This stamp is from 2003 and made by Penny Black.  I colored the rubber image with Marvy Brush Art Markers, the spritzed with water before stamping.

 

The embossed holly background is a Sizzix embossing folder.  Sentiment is a gold sticker by Starform.  The ribbon slide that holds the sentiment is a Spellbinders die.

 

With this card I used the same technique, but stamped the image on a paper coaster.  I bought a bunch of these years ago for a project that never got done.  The water absorbed a bit more in the material.  Since the coaster was too large for a card, I used a Spellbinders die to cut out the image.  I had to run it through my Big Shot several times to cut through that thicker paper, but it came out nicely.

Christmas Poinsettia cards

Instead of spending more money on the latest and greatest stamping supplies, I'm digging into my stash to use my well loved wood mounted rubber stamps.  The one thing I splurge on now is better quality cardstock to create my cards.

This poinsettia stamp is by Penny Black and is from 2004. 
I colored the rubber with Marvy Brush Art Markers, then spritzed with water before stamping.  I cut out the image with Spellbinders dies.  To get the tiny gold edge, I rolled the edges of diecut on the Versamark ink pad, then dipped it in gold embossing powder before heating with the heat gun.  The sentiment is a gold sticker by Starform.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone is having a nice Thanksgiving.  Here's the personal cards I sent out for Thanksgiving to my family and friends.

These cards are fairly quick to make.  The Martha Stewart punch set works well, if you cut the cardstock the correct size (3.25" X 5") before punching corners, then edges.  The stamp is by Paper Inspirations and fits well in the punched rectangle.  I adhered the paper to the brown cardstock, then embossed them for texture before adhering the sentiment rectangle.

Change of seasons

I love living in the desert because we usually have blue skies and nice dry weather.  However, we are now in one of our rainy spells.  Our tree in the front yard is showing lovely autumn colors, but no blue sky to show it off.

I haven't seen the mountains for several days, but this morning I caught a glimpse of them.  They are pretty with snow on them, but I'm glad it stays up high so I don't have to shovel it.

 

I'm taking a break from making cards, but hope to get back to it soon.  I mailed my box of cards to Operation Write Home and mailed my personal Thanksgiving cards this week.

Cards for loved ones.

I've continued to make cards using a similar color scheme as the previous post.   These are basic love cards for our heroes to send home to loved ones, using the papers I had on my desk from my previous card.

New friend, new challenge

Many of you know that I live in small town and haven't met many others who make cards.  I was excited to see an article in a local online newspaper about another cardmaker who makes cards for Operation write home.  I initiated contact and we chatted by email.  A few days ago, she came to my home and we spent a couple of very fun hours together.

She gave me a set of clear stamps called Cupcake Party by Simon Says Stamps because she had duplicates.  I demonstrated my method of lining dark colored cards to give our heros a place to write their message home.  I had grabbed a piece of purple cardstock.  She then left me with a challenge to make a card using the new stamps and the card base I had just created.  Here's the resulting card:

I see more fun crafting days together in the future.

Another challenge was to make 2 patriotic thank you cards for the post office.  One will go to headquarters of Operation Write Home for her postal workers.  The other will go to my local post office.  Here's the result of that challenge.

 

I will write personal messages inside both cards for all the hard work done by the postal workers in handling all the boxes of cards created by our cardmakers across the country.

Hero cards

I've made 6 cards similar to this for Any Hero cards for our deployed troops.  The stamps are from Stamper's Best and will be sent to Operation Write Home with personal messages inside.

Playing with texture

I'm trying to come up with a design I like for more Any Hero cards.

Both of these stamps are from Stamper's Best OWH fundraiser stamps.  I used silver embossing powder on the
E Pluribus Unum stamp.  The sentiment is in Memories blue ink.  The image and the sentiment are popped on foam tape.  The background is a Tiny Stars embossing folder that I added blue ink before adding the paper.  It came out rather distressed, but you can see the stars.

I've continued making love cards and also missing you cards.

I'm trying to use my embossing folders to give the cards some texture.

OWH Boot Camp - Balance in Design

I always enjoy the monthy Design Boot Camps on the Stars & Stamps blog.  I learn from each of them and try to use the suggestions when making cards.  It sometimes takes me a while to really create a sample that I feel works with the design principle.  The October Boot Camp was on Balance in Design.

I think I have a tendency to make symetrical cards like this:

I'm working my way to creating more asymetrical cards.  I think this one qualifies for that:

After I cut the sentiment with the partial die cutting technique to demonstrate the technique to a friend, I was challenged to create a card with such a strong color and still allow the sentiment to be read.  The yellow paper was suitable for that, but made the card feel very heavy at the bottom.  I decided to punch some hearts from the scraps from the red paper to add a little weight to the top.

I also did a redesign of the card from the previous post by adding a layer of red around the stars.  I now realize that card is also symetrical.