Oh Christmas Trees

No doubt like lots of you I'm fairly busy in the run up to Christmas but am enjoying all the preparations. Maybe one of these years I'll start my Christmas preparations a bit earlier than usual! Anyway I think I'm nearly there with the cards I want to make this year but took a little break away from card making to join in on Hero Arts' Deck the Halls Challenge.

I love little felt decorations so decided to make some to pop on my tree using dies from Hero Arts Merry Christmas Tree stamp and die set. To start with I die cut felt Christmas trees and then die cut green felt circles (from the same Hero Arts set) and a red heart.

Dies - Merry Christmas Tree (Hero Arts) & Bundle of Stitched Shapes (Simon Says Stamp)

Then I decorated the trees with buttons, stitching, sequins and gems. After the trees were complete I added either ribbon or baker's twine between the tree front and back then stitched the outlines and added wadding before finishing the stitching.

As I had the Christmas tree die out I decided to make another card with a removable decoration.

This time I used up lots of green scraps by putting them in rows of strips, cutting and then cutting again to make a patchy background. After die cutting the tree twice I sandwiched ribbon between the two trees and added buttons to finish. Then I added the tree to the embossed background with glue dots so that the ornament can be removed and used.

I was determined to use up every bit of the scrap background I had left over from making the tree so ended up die cutting shamrocks to put aside for next St Patrick's Day using a sweet die my friend Linda gave me. I've definitely never been this far ahead of myself before for a celebration!

Die - Shamrock (Impression Obsession)

Sequin Ornaments and Gift Tags

This year I'm hoping to make more Christmas cards to send than I managed to make last year - hope you're not getting sick of all the Christmas stuff on my blog!

My friend Trinh sent me a gorgeous collection of sequins in a wonderful range of colours and I wanted to use some of them on my cards and gift tags.

Stamps & Die set - Hero Arts Stamp and Cut Ornament

To make the card I die cut ornaments windows in panel of kraft card, embossed it with Darice's Snowflake Trim folder and lightly inked the edges with white ink. The sentiment was embossed. I then cut ornaments from red glitter card, stuck sequins on the ornaments and popped them behind the windows in the kraft panel.

To complete the card I added thread and gems.

As I had two die cut ornaments left over from cutting out the windows on the card, I decided to use them to make a couple of gift tags to go on pressies. I have a huge roll of brown parcel paper (that seems endless!) so used some of this to wrap a present. To make the wrapping paper I embossed some snowflakes and added gems and baker's twine.

The first tag was made by embossing an ornament in white and adding a sequin and gem to the centre.

Hero Arts - Designer Snowflakes set & Stamp and Cut Ornament

The second tag is supposed to match the card so I again embossed an ornament on the die cut and cut out the centre piece. Another ornament was die cut from red glitter card and after I added sequins, I adhered the upper layer with some foam pads.

Hero Arts - Designer Snowflakes set & Stamp and Cut Ornament

I'm submitting these projects into Hero Arts' Holiday Challenge (Anything Goes & Tag It), Simon Says Stamp's Anything Goes Challenge, Die Cut Diva's Any Holiday Challenge and a2z Scrapbooking Anything Goes Challenge.

Hope you're enjoying the weekend. After two very wet and windy days it's wonderful to see the sun shining here again today!

Poinsettia Tag Card

I had a bit of time today to make another Christmas card and, thanks to my friend Linda W, used a lovely poinsettia image from Hero Arts' new Peace Poinsettias set.

Hero Arts Stamps - Peace Poinsettias, Lattice Background, Stamp and Cuts Ornament & Merry Merry Decorate It set

I started by embossing a white piece of card with the holly ribbons folder from Cuttlebug. Then I die cut a tag, stamped the lattice background in gold ink from the Merry Merry Decorate It set and added ribbon. After cutting out the poinsettia flower and leaves, I added beads to the flower centre and a layer of crackle accents.

The sentiment was embossed in gold. I'm submitting this card into the Mad About Metallics and Tag It categories in Hero Arts' Holiday Challenge and Simon Says Stamp's Anything Goes Challenge.

Sparkling Season's Greetings

I haven't posted in a while but now that I've finished making things to donate to Christmas fairs and am back from our holiday in Disneyland Paris, I'm all ready to get into making more cards for Christmas.

Hero Arts has a great Holiday Challenge going on at the moment with a number of different fun categories. I decided to combine two of the categories - - Mad About Metallics and White Out.

Ornament stamp & die set (Hero Arts) & pine branch die (Impression Obsession)

My good friend Linda sent me a gorgeous new set from Hero Arts called Stamp & Cut Ornament - thanks again, Linda. The set has a few pretty ornaments, a lovely mix of sentiments and a die to cut out the ornaments - love this as it will definitely help speed up my Christmas card making!

To start with I made a card base and using foam pads added a panel which I had embossed using the Snowflake Trim embossing folder from Darice. Linda had also sent me pretty pine branch die cuts from Impression Obsession so I took one of these, embossed it with star dust embossing powder and to add even more sparkle applied a layer of star dust stickles.

I embossed the ornaments in silver, die cut them and then added gems, dots of stickles and thread to suspend them from the branch. The sentiment was also embossed in silver and to finish I added a sprinkling of gems to the background and on the branch.

Hope you are enjoying the weekend. We're having stormy weather with lots of rain and I think it's due to continue on that way for the weekend - it's a really good reason to stay inside and get inky!