Magical Christmas

Austin: I thought Sally was totally crazy by ripping the mountains up but made the card even awesome. I made the card to sent children in need and I think they are going to like it. What I felt when I was making it was fun and exiting. I enjoyed doing the watercoloured smooshing makes the mountain. I like the way the card is still looking awesome.

Sally:  Hi, so we always end up making way more Christmas cards than we need to hand out, what can I say? Austin loves making Christmas cards 😊 Instead of throwing them out of anything like that we like to give cards to various card drives or charities that collect cards to give to people in hospital. This year in addition to the Caring Hearts card drive we do every year we also made cards for Cards for Hospitalized Kids & Post Pals which are two different charities that give cards to kids who are seriously sick. Austin is a really compassionate kiddo & loves to be able to help people & if he can do it with his cards all the better.

Winter wonderland

Austin: I love this card because it has lots of glitter and sparkle which I love and has lots of character on this card.
My favourite part of the card is the glitter card background and the snowflakes is really pretty and the glitter houses is so perfect.

Sally: This card idea totally came from the embossing powder we heat embossed the snowflakes with. Kristina Werner recently did a card where she heat embossed one huge snowflake with some Brutus Monroe Rainbow Sparkle embossing powder & she mentioned that it looked amazing on black cardstock. We happened to have the Rainbow Sparkle embossing powder so I really wanted to try it out & from there this card idea just kind of manifested.

Christmas down under

Austin: I love the way the sand is the banner and the background is to die for and the waves are blended.
The tree with the decorations are amazing makes the card especially the penguin.

The stamped background is awesome because its a grey and words on it makes it stand out.

Sally: This card is kind of a merging of two favourite card ideas, three if you include the banner scene element.

Years ago I was watching a Jennifer McGuire video where she reviewed a stamp release by My Favorite Things. As she was going through the stamps I kind of zoned out until she got to this Penguin in Paradise set. I knew Austin would love making Christmas cards with it & he has, he's made loads (although not as many these days because I struggle with fine motor control which makes fussy cutting difficult and painful, I never could get the hang of solid dies so we never got them for this set). 

Austin's favourite way to use this penguin set is on a 'beach Santa' card, like with this awesome die from Paper Rose.

Rudolph the Dragon

Austin: I do lots of Santa cards with the dragon. I normally put them on a New York Card because I think it looks cool but I like this one too. I like how Santa is dropping presents, makes it a really good Christmas card.
I love the background watercolouring. I love watercolouring because it's so fun and I enjoy doing it.
Everything about the card is such a good design and I love the painted mountains because they make the background look good.

Sally: This is actually a deceptively simple card, That background is actually a simple watercolour background with black, watercolour painted mountains, a lot of flicking with white watercolours and a simple 4 pointed star.

Joy and Happiness

Austin: I really like this card because I used the background that has been sitting on the shelf for a while because I didn't know what to do with it.
I like doing glitter paste but I wish it dries faster because I forget what card I wanted to make with the background.
I like the dragon because it's good colours and I like it because dragons are awesome. I like the bit where the dragon and squirrel are having coffee together.

Sally: This card is actually relatively straight forward to put together once the background is done.

First off blend dark blue & rich purple water reactive inks in a semi circle on the upper half of a piece of card laying horizontally. I can't remember exactly which ones we used but I think they were regular Ranger Distress inks.

Christmas in April

Don't worry, it's not Christmas card time yet. I make Christmas Cards all year long, I need to make a lot of cards and I am a slow card maker so I start early....like boxing day early.

I used a mask to create the mountains and I blended the sky with shaded lilac distress ink and the mountains in a grey distress oxide ink weathered wood on a piece of neenah solar white cardstock. That sorted the background. Then I dye cut the border out of another piece of neenah solar white cardstock using the lawn fawn fancy scalloped rectangles and a simon says stamp stitched rectangle die, it cut out a lovely border.

I also dye cut the memory box alpine tree on white card it cut out perfectly.  Then I cut a piece of acetate to the perfect size for the card using the lawn fawn die I used for the fram. Next I used foam tape on the card to stick the card, before I stick everything together I stamped the sentiment (from the Hero Arts Warm Hogs stamp set using Hero Arts Dusty Blue) on the background. Finally I put sequins in the card to make it a 'shaker' card. I picked lots out and then put them on the card.

My sister coloured the bunny (from the Mama Elephant Pix Happy Holidays) in copic markers and then I die cut it and stuck it on the card.

What do you think? I like the shaker and the background showing round the frame. Shakers are lots of fun I think I will do lots this year. My sister has ordered me some My Favourite Things shaker pockets to make it easier to do them. She says shakers are annoying to make.
Do you like making shakers? Do you have any advice?

My Super Duper Superhero

This is one of my favourite cards as I really like super heroes and New York and this card has both. On the front of the card I blended the background using Distress Inks and then die cut a silhouette of New York using black card (My Favourite Things: New York Skyline) I added a monster (Lawn Fawn: Monster Mash) and a super hero - with his dog (Mama Elephant: Tiny Heros).
+

Inside the card I blended the background and added some splashes of gold. For the pop up (Lawn Fawn: Pivet Pop Up) panel I blended a background and added another die cut silhouette of New York. I had planned to put some of the super heroes and at least one monster on acetate but this didn't work so I stuck them slightly over the edge of the panel instead.

I think this card works really well and I am very happy with it.