Decoupage Christmas cards

Pile it on challenge 18 this week is '3 dimensional!', which is just right, because I needed to make a lot more Christmas cards and have done a batch of 18 decoupage cards.

The idea of 'Pile it on' is to see how many challenges you can incorporate for the theme.

Of course, as they are yet more Christmas cards, they are good for:

Creative Inspirations Challenge 18 'Christmas in October, Creative Card Crew 31 'It's a celebration' and Saturday Secret Crafter challenge 52 'celebration'.

Charisma Cardz challenge 39 was 'decoupage' - I actually made three of these cards before the deadline for this challenge was up, but just didn't have time to photo and blog them, so I'm still linking there.

I must apologise for the photos - the sun was streaming in (can't complain in October), bringing a shaft of light and shadows - and I haven't got time to fuss too much about the photos, as I need to get on and make more cards.

It's a pity that you can't really see the foiling on many of these cards or the glitter on some, but you can get the general idea. Even though some appear to be flat, they are all decoupaged.

These first two are to send to children, so they are right for Lili of the valley 38: a Christmas card for a child:


The one on the left here is blue and red, which is the theme this week for Paperminutes 33; the card on the right is a windows scene for Fab's Big Christmas week 38: 'Santa looking in' card:


The theme for challenge 3 on Crafty Catz is 'snowmen and snowflakes' - these figure on quite a few of these cards, but certainly on this one below on the left and also on the one below that on the right.

Santa's sleigh on this card on the left is right for Winter Wonderland 19: sleigh bells ring:

and these are two more specifically for children (Lili of the valley 38):

Hot chocolate or Coffee and Cream

When I first saw challenge 17 on Winter Wonderland: 'hot chocolate', I knew what paper I was going to use, but I just didn't get round to making the card until now. It's very simple, but quite effective. The panel behind the Christmas pudding is vellum with feint gold holly print, mounted on to a coppery gold foil card. The background reminds me of swirling hot chocolate - mmmmm.

This week's theme on Rosie-Dee for week 55 is 'coffee and cream with a cherry on top' - not exactly a cherry, but the red berries are similar and the rest of the card has the colours of coffee and cream (when I'm not thinking of hot chocolate!)




Of course, as they are Christmas cards, they are more for:

Creative Inspirations Challenge 18 'Christmas in October, Creative Card Crew 31 'It's a celebration' and Saturday Secret Crafter challenge 52 'celebration'.

What's on your workdesk Wednesday

It's that time in the week again - has it really been seven days since last Wednesday? Mind you, today has been a(nother) long day up at Guy's with John, so this is my first opportunity today to get in here and do any crafting. Having just put together three simple decoupage Christmas cards (got to build up stock as quickly as I can) I remembered that I should take a photo for WOYWW - perhaps it's just as well to take it now than later!

I've been featured

My card for last week's sketch challenge on Paper Blooms has been featured - I am so surprised. I really enjoyed making that card.

Christmas cards

Yesterday I made 100 Christmas cards - they were simple ones, using a variety of stamped images and digi images (mainly Charmed Dottie ones). Papers are a mix of DCVW, Dovecraft and Papermania. I made 5 cards for each design, because I will be selling them in packs of 5 for charity.

I'm a little late for My Time to Craft 79: snow buddies, but quite a few of these cards are good for that.

I used this sketch on the sweetest thing challenge 38 for quite a few of the cards, changing it a bit here and there - in fact it influenced the layout of many of these cards:











Some of the cards fit a few challenges this week:

Creative Inspirations Challenge 18 is 'Christmas in October', so they are all good for that. And Creative Card Crew 31 is 'It's a celebration' - so Christmas definitely is! Also the theme of this week's Saturday Secret Crafter challenge 52 is 'celebration'.

Fab's Big Christmas 40 is 'paper strips and tearing' - I haven't done the tearing, but there are plenty of paper strips on a lot of these cards.

Papertake: black, white + one other - the following three are appropriate for that (and they still follow the sketch - just turned):



Challenge 27 on Digital Tuesday today is 'music to my ears', so these carol singers seem appropriate for that (they are a Dottie download):


For this one, the kings were coloured with copics (as was the Hero Arts Santa stamp on one of the above cards), so this is good for today's Die Cuts R Us 10: get colourful:

Die Cuts R us challenge 9 award

I was picked as one of the 3 top cards for challenge 9 on Die Cuts R Us for this card.

Christmas circles

This card is for sketch 46 on Just Birthdays and Christmas:


Today's challenge on Dottie's World is 'going round in circles', so I thought the PM paper with the Christmas greetings in circles was just right - and even the little dots on the other paper are circles ... and perhaps even the dots on the cuttlebug swiss dots embossing could be classed as circles - probably pushing it a bit far! lol!

The digi image is, of course, a Charmed download.

Kaboodle 14 calls for a recipe: 1 solid cardstock (the green core'dination embossed card), 2 patterned papers (the PM ones). 3 embellishments (the ribbon, wreath and 3D sentiment) and a digi image (the Charmed Christmas tree).

As I've used a digi image, it's another one for this week's CCEE. And the use of red and green again is another one for this week's Simon Says challenge.

Rainbow lori

This is the inchie I made for the BF September swap - have received it back with the others that I showed here - thought it would be appropriate the Paperminutes 82: birds. Sorry for the grainy look to the photo - it's because of the magnification.

Cutie Sunday 61

This card is for the sketch on Cutie Sunday challenge 61:



It's that Santa stamp again - you'll begin to think I haven't got any other Christmas stamps - not true, have got lots - must start using some of the others.

Another win

Yay! my name was drawn for challenge 10 on Paper Cutz: 'The winner of challenge # 10, drawn at random, is Hazel. Congratulations Hazel! Please send me your addy to the email address on the sidebar, and I'll get your Keepsake Essentials Back to School 3-D Die Cuts out to you.'

Grungy rumpled flowers - not sure!

This card is for sketch 51 on Crafts4eternity:

As part of the WCD on BF, Caroline gave us a top tip of how to make grungy rumpled flowers (hers looked lovely in the example she showed us).

Well, I tried ... I really did ... and this is how mine turned out ... think I'll be replacing with 'regular' flowers.

WCD on BF - Kaz's sketch

To celebrate World Cardmaking Day, there is a mini crop on Bubbly Funk Forum - a lot of the lubbly girls on there have given us projects to do (so far I've only taken some photos and taken part in a hilarious game of online bingo in chat!).

Anyway, this is the sketch that Kaz provided:



The stamped image is a Daisy & Dandelion one - this is Daisy coloured with copics - (was free with a magazine) and the papers are all BG wassail. I had to cheat a bit because my image was bigger than the space on the strip down, but, hey, sketches are for cheating, aren't they?



It's another one to link for Stampavie 63: animals, and another one for A Spoon Full of Sugar 71: Christmas.

BF WCD photos

As part of the WCD mini crop, Caroline asked us to take a photo of some unusual flowers in our home. These aren't unusual, but they had just arrived with my online groceries when I saw the challenge, so I took the picture:



You couldn't call these 'flowers', but they are quite unusual - I bought them for display last Christmas and liked them, so they are still around now:



And we were asked to find some spots - there didn't seem to be many spots here, until I thought of these towels:

Here's Santa again

This card is for the sweet Sunday sketch challenge 37 on The Sweetest Thing:



It is very similar to the last card I showed, using similar PM papers and stamped background - this time the background was stamped with Versamark and embossed with clear powder.

As for the previous card, I'm linking for 365 cards day 217 and a Spoon full of sugar 71, also for Christmas stampin' 36.

Santa was here

I've made this card for the Sketch Saturday challenge on My Creative Clutter:



It's also for today's Stampin' Saturday challenge (day 217) on 365 cards - '
Today's stamping challenge is to stamp a background pattern that is the same color as your card stock.'

Papers are Papermania A wonderful Christmas time and I used my favourite Santa stamp. The 'Santa was here' and 'Be jolly' stamps I used randomly for the background are Dovecraft. I stamped with Stazon blazing red.

This is another card for Spoon full of sugar 71: Christmas. Also another one for the colour combo on Simon Says - red and green.

This also fits challenge 36 on Christmas Stampin' to use two stamps.

Toot the flute

I've just changed the title of this post - I originally put 'on the fiddle' and, of course, it's a flute! D'oh!

Sketch 135 on CPS is simple, but just right for the card I want to make, giving centre stage to a newly acquired Penny Black stamp:



Today's challenge 69 on Penny Black is 'autumn breezes' - 'If you don't have any Autumny Penny Blacks......don't worry....just go with autumn colours' - that's what I've done, using copic cadmium orange to colour the back of the music book and autumnal colours for the papers.

Similarly, today's challenge 49 on One Stop Craft is 'autumn inspiration', where it says 'So I would like you to be inspired by Autumn, this could be the beautiful colours of Autumn or trees, leaves, whatever your heart desires', so I've gone for the autumn colours (I've recently made quite a few 'autumn' leaves cards, so this makes a change).

It's another one for Ooh la la 37 'shades of autumn', this time concentrating on the 'shades' rather than an autumnal image.

The current Mixed Media Monday challenge is 'meaningful music', so this is good for that

Day 196 on 365 cards called for 'just a touch' - 'Using a stamped image (ink or digi), use black on white, and just add a touch of color somewhere.' - this stamped image is perfect (or should I say purrfect) for that.