Have yourself a merry little Christmas

I apologise for the photo - it was taken a few years ago with my old camera in quite poor light :( 

The Holly and the Ivy

One of my favourite Christmas Carols is "The Holly and the Ivy" - I love carols that hark back to ancient celtic traditions that predate Christianity.  Anyway, I made this card, and all of my chorister friends thought it was great, but some other friends had NO IDEA what I was on about.  Would you have been able to figure it out if I hadn't told you?

Here's another of my "ghosts of Christmas past" - this one is from 2008.  This is another one where I had a limited amount of paper - I had 2 sheets of the holly paper, and then it was discontinued!  I had just enough to make 45 cards for Christmas :)

I can remember cutting all the ribbon for the bows, and taking them to choir practice - we have to know a lot of our Christmas music off by heart, so without music to hold, I had two hands free to tie bows throughout rehearsal!  (I got quite a few strange looks! LOL!)

Holly Jolly

Here's another "ghost of Christmas past" - this time, it's Christmas 2009.  I decided to go with a square card, just for something different.  I wanted to use the patterned paper (sorry, I can't remember the brand), but I only had 2 sheets, and had 45 cards to make, so I had to make do with small strips :)  I really like how the paper has pale blue and pink in it - I'm a traditional girl, and the vast majority of my Christmas  cards end up red, green and glittery - nothing wrong with that, just nice to have a bit of a change now and again. :)  This was also the first card I made with the use of my WeRMemory Keepers Corner Chomper - another tool that I don't know how lived without it!

Alison's birthday

It is my friend Alison's birthday today, and I'll be seeing her, along with some other freinds, tomorrow.  I decided that she needed a special birthday card, so I broke out the paper that my freind, Sharyne, bought for me in Japan.  I've had it for over a year now, but have been hoarding it!   I finally bit the bullet and cut into the lovely sheet, but I decided to keep the card ultra simple, to let the paper do the talking.

Masculine card for Casual Fridays

I have a couple of male friends with birthdays coming up, so I needed some masculine cards - easier said than done!  So I went to CASual Fridays and Annabelle Stamps for some inspiration - and got it!  The challenge this week at CASual Fridays is CFC21:  Create a Clean And Simple project using at least 3 shades of a monochromatic color PLUS Brown.  The challenge at Annabelle Stamps is "Say it with a male card."

I went for blues plus brown.  I was particularly inspired by Karolyn Loncon's card at CASual Fridays, but she went with greens - you can find her blog post here.  

I was so happy with how this card turned out, I made 3 more!!! 

Lily Pad sketch challenge

I made this card today for my friend, Anne, whose birthday is this weekend.  I hope she doesn't look at my blog between now and then! LOL!!  I followed the sketch at Lily Pad cards, shown below. It is a "Hero Arts presents" challenge, so I used a Hero Arts stamp - the musical background is a HA cling stamp.  The sentiment is Stampin' Up. 

 I wanted you to be able to see the glimmer on the flowers - I drenched them in a mix of shimmer paint and isocol - and I mean drenched!!!

Deck the hall with boughs of holly

And, yes, that is "deck the hall", not "deck the halls" - every good chorister knows that!!!

Here's a card I made last year with some metallic holly leaves I had in my stash for YEARS!!!   This design eventually became the front of my choir's Christmas cards last year, with some musical notation added in the middle of the wreath.  :)

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat!

The title of this post is from one of my favourite, very old-fashioned Christmas carols.  I have Christmas on the mind - we started singing Christmas music at Choir last week in preparation for many, MANY singing gigs in November and December, so I thought I'd try to come up with a design for this year's Christmas cards.  I can't show you until AFTER Christmas, of course, so I thought I would share some "ghosts of Christmas past". 

Here's Christmas 2010. I found the sentiment "Not a Creature was Stirring" first, and then had to buy a mouse stamp to go with it!  The mouse is stamped on a white panel inside the card, and coloured in with Derwent coloured pencils, and you can see him through the window in the front :)

Another small CAS card

Another card for Less is More week 33 1000 challenge, and CAS-ual Fridays CFC 20, using up the last bit of my stamped image from this card. 

Also using my new Distress Inks, to dye the flower, and stamp the image, and sponge the edges - is there a clue to working with these inks and NOT ending up with inky hands?  LOL!!!

Small CAS card - glitter and acetate

Yet again, I started making this card with leftovers from this acetate window card - this time, I had a piece of the stamped acetate left, and I wanted to make a CAS card for Less is More, as well as a small card for CAS-ual Fridays.  It's also going in this weeks Simon Says Stamp Challenge.  This 10cm by 10cm card is the result.

Clean and Simple 158

Hi, all,

I made a card yesterday with two stamped panels flanking an acetate panel.  Well, I had a bit of the stamped panel left, so I thought it would go well with this week's Clean and Simple sketch #158. 

Here's the panel close up, to show the shimmer on the flowers:

 And here's the whole card.

 Thanks for visiting - have a great day!

Acetate window card

Wow - it's been two and a half weeks since I've posted anything!!  Worse than that, it's been almost two and a half weeks since I've made a card at my crafting desk!  Ouch!!!  I have been incredibly busy with work things (marking assignments), so haven't had much leisure time to devote to craft.

I've been reading the daily posts from Jennifer McGuire's Inspiration Showcase that I signed up for, but it has taken until today to actually put any of her techiniques into practice.   I've been looking forward to it, as a big order that I put in with Simon Says Stamp in the US arrived last week, so I have a whole heap of new fun tools to play with :)

Here's the card I made today:

 I made the flower using the technique I wrote a tutorial for in July - you can find the post here:

 I'm following some of Jennifers hints, and using shimmer paint in my water mister to add a bit of shine to the background stamp, which I coloured using Tombow markers before misting and stamping onto white Papertrey Ink cardstock.

I used my new white StazOn ink to stamp the background on the acetate - kept the pattern relatively simple so it's easy to read the sentiment stamped inside the card.  

Thanks for visiting - I hope you have a great day :)

Clean and Simple meets ColourQ!

I made this card using last week's Clean and Simple FTL 155, which required me to pick a past ColourQ colour combo - it was a bit tricky - they're all awesome!!

 

Wedding cake

My niece, Lauren, is in grade 3, and her teacher is getting married in a few weeks.  Lauren asked me to make a wedding card for her to give to her teacher. Here's what I came up with: