Tag piunches and December Birthday

I made the most of the Christmas Gift Giving Promotion that ran 1st Nov - 29th Dec 2009 where spending £45 qualified you for free tag or small tag punches. Then I found a workshop on the web where they gave instructions for the star/pointsettia shown above. I simply tried this out and will be doing it again next year to greater effect. You make 16 tag outlines and then overlie them on your backing sheet and then cut into the points. I think I will be embellishing this idea further with sparkly things I think :-)

December is a fairly busy month as far as Birthday are concerned and above you can see my further exloration with the gorgeous whit embossing powder. This time with the Baroque Motifs stamp set, using Basic Black and Old Olive inks in varying intensity of colour. Of course, this was the ideal opportunity for matching wrapping paper and using the tag punch for a matching tag for the gift.

Ruby Red Wreath

Saw this idea in a newsletter and it was incredibly simple to do. Take a small circle and place it centrally on the card, using the tall bobbly reid stamp from the Pocket Silhouettes stamp set with Ruby Red ink just stamp around the small circle to form the wreath. The great thing about this is that if you are in doubt of how it's going to look, just do a bit more stamping to create a stronger image. When you have completed the wreath stamping, remove the central circle. Then make two small holes with a handheld punch, to tie 3/16" Gingham red ribbon in a bow at the base of the wreath. One of my favorite cards as it's so simple.

Christmas Card Production

As time started to race past I realised that I needed to get a production line organised - just to try and produce the volume of cards needed. I got really carried away and started to mix stamps sets - here you can see Season of Joy, The Snowflake Spot and Perfect Presents. I really love the effect that can be achieved by simply stamping several times to vary the shade of colour, getting lighter with each stamp. Particularly effective for the small snowflakes and pointsetias.

I loved the tiny spot formation of these stamps and they looked stunning on Old Olive and also Ruby Red backing colour in white emboss powder, giving a wonderfully tactile 3d finish :-)

Carry on Christmas!

Again with the gorgeous Season of Joy stamp set I managed to use Christmas as a reason to spoil myself with the Stampin Write Earth Elements Markers which allows you to colour different sections of the same stamp so that you can have brown trunks, green trees and yellow stars on the Christmas tree :-) Also here is the So Swirly Jumbo Wheel with Old Olive Ink which I think gives understated yet stylish co-ordination - yes very easy to get carried away with SU products!

Where has the time gone?

How terrible! I haven't posted anything since October 2009! Shame on me! Well, Christmas does tend to take over, and with all the temptation of Stampin my own cards this year I thought I should include some fruits of my labour...as I love all of the writting stamps I could hardly wait to try the Season of Joy stamp set, when I'd seen it in the Ideas book. Simple yet effective - clear emboss powder for the Ruby Red pointsettia flower and Old olive central plaque and then snow really should be white - so white embossing powder for the snowflake on the bottom corner :-)