Three Deers!

No I am not referring to my friends and I, out shopping...... as according to my daughter Heather- I am 'Middle Aged'! But today's blog offering....And Sorry, but while the inspiration is there, you have to go with the flow.........so yes this is another Christmas in July post!

While all hyped up with Christmas craft I made a selection of gift bags/ boxes, the lovely snowflake card for all three came from just one sheet of the A4 whisper white card that had been given the 'all over' stamp treatment with the delightful 'Serene snowflakes Stampin' Up!' stamp set.

The chosen ink colours were- 'Night of navy', 'Pink pirouette', 'Bashful Blue' & 'Perfect Plum', and it was just a case of totally covering the white A4 sheet with the stamped images, when stamping any image to totally cover an area, it always looks best if you stamp the image going off the edge of the piece.

Once I had made up the bags/ boxes, I used the lovely 'Al la carte' stamp 'Dasher' as the main decoration, the little 'merry' sentiment came from the 'Tiny Tags' SU stamp set and the decorative label 'do not open..' & 'Santa post' both came from the 'Winter Post' SU stamp set. Some of the 'Dasher' images were cropped down using a punch and for the larger bag, it was mounted onto some 'Night of Navy' card and the 'Scallop' edge punch was used as decoration along the bottom.

If you would like further details of how these bags/ boxes were folded or would like to purchase any of the supplies used then please do contact me: sally-johoughton@hotmail.co.uk

Also was it one of those strange days were we all forget the most important things yesterday?? last night at 'creative cafe' I had forgotten my Acrylic block & 'Stamp-a-ma-jig', Anyway we got by and had fun crafting together too! I will be back tomorrow with a none Christmas related offering..........I promise xx

CAS......Christmas!!!

OK I have mentioned the dreaded 'C' word again.....but teamed it with CAS, this stands for 'Clean and simple'. This is- sort of a less is more approach to your card lay outs, and can be a good approach to bulk card making!

For these cards I came up with one layout/ design idea and I just changed the ink colour, for variation! It's a great way to make each card slightly different!

Using the snowflake from the 'Winter Post' SU stamp set, I inked it up in my chosen colour and stamped it on the top 2/3's of the card blank, to get a shade variation I used the 2nd and 3rd impression from the stamp too.......this means that I didn't add anymore ink, I just stamped it again for the 2nd time and then the 3rd, again not adding ink, so the shade goes lighter.......it's amazing what you can do with ink!!

The colours I have used for these samples are from the 'Stampin' Up!- Brights' collection and are 'Tempting Turquoise' and 'Melon Mambo', but don't be held back by this....your cards can be made in a colour of ink of your choice!

The sentiment is from the SU stamp set 'Heard from the Heart', this set of stamps has lots of different sentiments and I used the Christmas one, they all have hand written look to them, and the sweeping line in and away just calls out for some of our SU bling, on both sides-the camera never really picks up how super sparkly this is! To add a bit more of a sparkle I added a tiny 'bling' to the centre of three of the snowflakes too!

To follow on from the front design, I have added stamping directly to the inside of the card......it saves the hassle of cutting an insert, decorating that and sticking it in too, but the main reason is that the 'Whisper white' card stock is perfect for stamping on so why waste the inside area?!!

I have just realised that I haven't decorated any envelopes to match, but this would be easy to do along the same lines......hmmmmm I think I will just nip and do that now! Please leave suggestions of your 'CAS' Christmas card ideas via the comments, it would be great to know what people are making xxx