Sending Smiles

  I'm done with winter.  If it's not going to give me a beautiful snowfall, let's just move along.  Haha - I wish it was that easy but it is in my craft room.  I needed a cheery card and I always love butterflies in season and out of season.  So here is my happy versions of Sending Smiles in a slimline format.

I started by using an old leaf stencil by Art Impressions and sponging in some different shades of green with my Distress Oxides.  I then cut the Symbol background out of pastel green foil by Recollection and used trimmed it to use the smaller halves to flank the sides of my slimline base.

The Sending Smiles and butterflies from the Butterflies Spray and Butterfly Pocket Insert were cut from the same slightly different shades of blue cardstock.

Supplies Used:

A Way with Words Sending

A Way with Words Sweet Smiles

A Way with Words Butterflies Spray

ECD Butterfly Pocket Insert

ECD Symbol background

Quick Christmas thank you card

 It's almost Christmas! I hope you've got all your Christmas cards out by now.  I love opening the mailbox and finding a bit of that personal mail in the midst of junk mail - this is true anytime of the year but I love the frequency of it in December.  And it should keep going with a flurries of thank you cards in January.  So today I'm sharing a quick thank you card you can make and use up all those red and green scraps.

Many of the die cuts that I used were already around as extras from my previous Christmas card projects.  I did have to cut some extra pine branches to fill it in my little spray.  After gathering up one holly branch, one berry branch and 3 pine branches from the Create A Wreath set, I placed all of them together and hid the ends with a pinecone.  

I used a bit of holographic washi tape to run across the card - that was very helpful in lining up the pastel foil thank you die cut.  I topped off my spray with a bright red bow and voila - I've got a festive card ready to be filled in after all the presents are open.

Supplies used:

Thank you 2

Christmas Accents

Create A Wreath

 

Dream big slim line card

Switching gears from all things Christmas just briefly to play around with the new Spellbinders small die of the month.  Now, I am not a cat person at all but I do have friends that are.  It's just something I have to overlook.  Lol!  But I thought making a big window would work perfectly with the Dream Big die and it fits perfectly on a slim line card.

I kept it pretty simple so it came together quickly.  I made a sunset using Distress Oxide Inks.  I used the same size as my base would be so that I knew how much to ink up.

I die cut the tree branch twice and trimmed off some so that the tree peaked in between two window panes.  I added some stars using a white gel pen and made that top star into a shooting ones by adding some motion lines.

A black cat and a touch of gold on the word dies and my card is all done!

Dare we dream big for 2021?

 

Building a Christmas Scene

 I'm over on the Elizabeth Craft Designs Blog today with a Christmas scene I made using a lot of different die sets.

Christmas shaker ornament/card

 How many homemade Christmas ornaments do you have on your tree?  Every year I make some so the numbers are increasings and the plain glass ones are gradually staying more and more in the box as I have less room.  Maybe I just need to add another tree.  :)

My latest ornament is inspired by a friend who called me and asked me to make something to put on her mom's Christmas tree as a surprise.  She just got diagnosed with breast cancer, her grandkids won't be able to come for Christmas and she's just not feeling festive this season.  So her wonderful daughter thought of bringing a fully decorated tree to her front door with ornaments made from her family/friends.  Isn't that a great idea?

I made this ornament all with dies from Quietfire Design and then taped it to a card - makes it easier for mailing and it just completes it, you know?  It took me a while to figure this out but any die with a nice simple shape can be made into a shaker card!  And you don't even need to have foam which I never seem to have on hand.

I die cut the Flourished ornament from the Love Joy and Peace Ornament set 7 times.  I found a circle die that was bigger than the opening and smaller than the outer edge and used that for the backing of the shaker element.  You can handcut one if you don't have the perfect size because the edges of the circle will be hidden later.  I also cut a circle from an acrylic sheet for my shaker component.  Glue all the 7 layers together and on the back, the circle from cardstock.

You can add more layers depending on how thick you need the spacing.  I'm using chunky glitter so I did not need it too thick. 

Add the glitter and seal it in with the acrylic layer.  I die cut another ornament out of gold foil and put that on the top.  I flipped over the foil and die cut another ornament the wrong side up so that I could put that on on the back of the ornament.  To get rid of the edges of the die cut that is going the "wrong way" I ran just the diecut through my Big Shot again to flatten it out.

I added a tiny poinsettia from the Christmas accents and the word Peace to the front.  I liked this so much I made a few more and am sending the set below to her.  You can write on the back a message - I added some Bible verses that I thought would be encouraging.

I hope you like it and will be inspired to see which dies you can turn into a shaker card/ornament!

Love Joy Peace Ornament Set

Christmas Accents