Catching up!

I’ve still been finding time to craft, but blogging has definitely taken a back seat lately. Today, though, on my non-work day, I finally found some time after lunch to head into the craft room, get creative, and catch up on sharing what I’ve been making. I have three cards to show you today, each with its own little story.

The first card is what I’d call a “Mesk” card — made from the bits and pieces that were sitting on my messy desk waiting to be turned into something useful.

I had a 3.75-inch strip of 12x12 patterned paper left over from making an envelope, so I trimmed it down to fit a white panel and rounded one side for a softer look. I added another scrap of patterned paper along the side, then went digging through my container of saved bits and found a sentiment I’d pre-cut awhile ago. A scrap of vellum became the circle tag, and I finished everything off with a few little gold hearts from my die-cut embellishments. This one actually came together earlier in the week, and I love how it made good use of leftovers.

The next card is a Christmas card, also made earlier this week. Back in March, I picked up some non-branded Christmas dies from my local stationery store, and they turned out to be such a great buy.

For this card, I die cut the pieces from green and red cardstock, then used scraps of gold and dark brown for the star and trunk. After that, it was simply a matter of piecing everything together to create the tree. To give the design a focal area, I used an old embossing folder to create a border around the panel and softly ink blended around the edges. A few gold dots on and around the tree finished it off nicely.

And finally, today’s make — another Christmas card.

This one came about while I was putting some of my stash back where it belonged. As I tidied up my Tim Holtz Bigz dies, I came across the Christmas Cardinal die and knew it would be perfect for the Christmas Kickstart Challenge — Season’s Tweetings.

I die cut the design — it’s an all-in-one die — and then used Tri-Blends alcohol markers to colour each section. For a snowy touch, I added White Nuvo Crystal Drops to the branch. To really let the die-cut image shine, I mounted it on a 5-inch square panel embossed with a Cuttlebug folder. The sentiment is from an LDRS Creative stamp set and was die cut with the coordinating Sentiment Stack II die.

And card #2 is being entered into Darnell's NBUS May Challenge 

Thank you so much for sticking with me to the end. I really do appreciate every one of my readers and commenters.

Happy crafting!