Christmas cards at Card Makers Success Summit - Aug 2024

 There is an upcoming Card Makers Success Summit starting 8 August - 11 August.   It's free - but each presentation is only available for 24 hours... however you can purchase a life time VIP pass that allows early access to the presentations.  Great for me as I work full time and the presentation times are usually the middle of my night.   And it's a perfect theme - Christmas/Holiday cards.   Just the thing to spark some Christmas card making.  

So I've been watching a few of the videos and made a couple of cards.   I was inspired by the presentation by Ardyth Percy-Robb (Mod Merry Christmas Cards with Minimal Supplies) where she used her own homemade stencils amongst other ideas.   Ardyth took some post-it's and cut some pointy ovals to make some ornaments.   Well, I will tell you - mine turned out terrible - so I adapted the idea a bit... I took a sweet little ornament die and made myself a stencil with some masking paper.  

The die I used was from a Catherine Pooler stamp and die set- Wonderful time of the Year.  I used the dies to make the stencils and then used  Altenew's Coral Berry, Ultramarine and whatever the green ink was on my blending brush on a 4"x 4" panel.   I used the little ornament topper from the set - stamped in Charcoal Suit grey ink and also the little star on the ornament. I added some little metallic pearls as embellishments. Stamped the sentiment from Waffle Flower Star Snowflake set in the grey ink as well.   I used a grey alcohol marker to add dots around the edge and layered the panel onto some grey card.  Added to a 5.5" square card base.   

And my second card was inspired by Therese Calvird (Unlock Basic Shapes to make FUN & EASY Holiday Cards) where she used basic circles, rectangles etc to make some cards.  Both her cards used circles to make a Snowman.  One was a big snowman and the other a smaller one inside a snow globe.

I remembered I had a polaroid stamp in a Lawn Fawn Set so the idea came to put the snow man in the frame.   I stamped the image from Say Cheese set (currently sold out).  I don't have the die so fussy cut the frame and cut out the centre.  Went around all the edges with a black marker.  I cut some circles from a Spellbinders Nestibilities dies in white to make the body, used a long thin rectangle die from MFT for his hat and two circle dies cut together to make the scarf from some card I had coloured with a Copic marker.  Two tiny triangles made the ends,  A snippet of orange coloured card made his nose and some green shapes cut for leaves.  A bit of white pen to add veins and they became my holly. Added red gems for the berries, black gems for his eyes and some dark grey enamel dots for the buttons on this body. His mouth was a few black dots with a Sharpie marker.  Made a blue blended piece with some white spray and some dots of the white pen for snow.   Layered my snowman behind the opening and added the blue panel behind.   Used another sentiment from the Waffle Flower Star Snowflake set added on the frame.   Found some pretty glittery snowflake patterned paper to add to my card base and then added the polaroid frame on a jaunty angle.

I can see myself making a few more of that sweet snowman and the ornament card.  

I've watched a few more presentations and got two more cards made - still to take photos.   Can't wait to watch some more presentations and get some more ideas.  

Christmas Kickstart - Get a Head-er start!

An interesting challenge at Christmas Kickstart this fortnight.  -Get a Head-er Start - be inspired by the Header

I was inspired by the colour of the background and the red script plus of course, the snowman.

I found this sheet of snowmen in a paper pack from Reflections called Northern Nights.   It had the pretty aqua background.  I cut out a sentiment from red card.   I die cut the background die in vellum which looks great in real life, but doesn't show up so well in this photo.  This sentiment is one that was part of a magazine that my stationery shop was selling off cheap. I added some red 3D Liquid dots for embellishment. 

Thanks Jo for another challenging challenge and another card added to my Christmas supply.

A Snowman in Summer.....

It's strange to be making a Snowman card when it's summer time here in New Zealand.... but I wanted to CASE a card I saw on Gina K's Stamp TV   Her technique was to use a white Faber Castell pen and a silver pen to make a plaid background.

 

The background turned out perfectly, even though my silver pen is a bit thinner than what Gina used.  My snowman is from Hero Arts and my sentiment from Kaisercraft.   

I know summer is here as today we had strawberries for dessert.  This is one of my favourite fruits over the summer period and they are very plentiful and reasonably priced just now.  We love ours with a spoonful of icing sugar and some vanilla yoghurt.   Semi healthy! 

We're off to visit some local gardens tomorrow.  They are are in the country about half an hour from here.  It's a fund raiser for a local Rotary group.  

It's late so off to bed for me.  Back tomorrow night to take part in the Moxie Fab Thanks Cath blog hop... see you then

"Frosty the Snowman" @ Red Carpet Studio

Sunday again and time for the fun challenge over at Red Carpet Studio.

  It a card challenge to use a Snowman or Snowflakes.  Easy?  YES!  Pop over and see what we came up with to inspire you.

The sponsor this week is Crafty Sentiments! The winner will receive their choice of three digital stamps.

 

The team got to work with some delightful images from our sponsors.  I just loved them.  First up is the card you'll see on the blog.

I used this delightful image here

 I found the globe on line here.  I printed it twice so I could cut the base to add over top of the black frame.  Once I had printed one with the image on, I coloured with Copics and added lots of stickles.

My second card used another of the images from Crafty Sentiments Design

I printed and coloured and added lots of Kindyglitz and Sakura gel pen. Matched it with some PP from DCWV Christmas mat stack and white embossed the sentiment from Hero Arts.    Punched and coloured the snowflakes with the Sakura pen and added some gems.  

Please join us at Red Carpet Studio with your snowman or snowflake cards.  

Had a fun weekend away, but now lots and lots of blogs to catch up on.  

Dawn