Sunday 21 October 2018

Neighbourly Christmas

I'm in Christmas card mode again today, and this time I have seven cards I've made batch-style to create cards for my neighbours.  I do get bored of baking the same card so I do like to do lots of individual cards for Christmas, but having a few designs you can knock out quickly is still handy for the "less special" cards and this is one you can play around with if you want to make it simple or more complex.

I've used just Mama Elephant's new Holiday Messages Stamp and Avery Elle's Cityscape Die and some papers and that's all for all 7 of the cards I have to share today. 


I started off with the most simple design - a die cut stacked row of houses and two of the stamps from the set combined to make the perfect sentiment for neighbour cards.


I die cut 2 card and one patterned paper for all these cards to get a stacked look for the die cut and chopped off the last house on the right so the die sits more in the middle of the card rather than being a full border.



I used bright contemporary papers (these ones are from Lawn Fawn's Really Rainbow Christmas which just sold out again but will be back soon - but any bright paper works for this look).  You don't even need specially Christmas papers, this one is just green spotted. 


Contemporary papers on kraft gives a different look from the exact same design and allows papers with a more white edge to stand out when they would otherwise be lost on a white card.


A more classic paper gives another different look - these papers are from Simple Stories Merry and Bright.


Classic papers on white give a more contemporary feel but with more traditional Christmas patterns.


If you wanted to take the design a little further then here I've used Hickory Smoke distress ink to add a little stormy sky (tip - place a blank die cut down and blend away from it then you don't get ink in the windows) and then finished with some texture paste snow through a stencil.  The new one from Newton's Nook would be perfect here.


Finally I used a couple more pieces from the die set - cutting the moon from white and Santa and his reindeer from glitter scraps.  I added an offset grey layer behind the houses so they would stand out against the moon and embossed my sentiment using white embossing powder on the navy base.

Hope they give you some ideas for batch making that doesn't get boring to make!



NEWS FROM THE STORE

We heard from the distributor that his Hero Arts delivery containing last month's kit add-ons which was delayed has actually been declared lost by the freight forwarder, so he is trying to re-order the lost items along with this month's add-ons.  If they have them at Hero Arts we expect them late October/early November.

We expect to get the latest Neat and Tangled release this week.

Wplus9 also have a new release this week which is in transit.

That's all for today.  Catch you Friday.

Tara



2 comments:

  1. Might just have to case this design, Tara, if that's OK! And how on earth did I miss those papers?

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  2. This is a great design for batch cards. I usually make at least 100 for Christmas, but I always run out of steam before I get to the neighbours cards and they end up with shop bought ones (hangs head in shame). I need to follow your example and find a simple design that's quick to replicate.

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The Seven Hills Crafts Design Team