Last Minute Christmas Cards!

Hey, it Bev Here!

How is everybody's Christmas preparations going? I seem to be getting slightly worried now that I have left making some of my Christmas cards far too late! So now it's time for some quick, last minute and mass produceable ideas ;)

Today I am sharing a duo using Avery Elle Peaceful Pines, a clear stamp set which ticks the quick and mass produceable boxes.

For both my cards I've mixed traditional and non-traditional cards to make a duo of cards using all the stamps contained in the stamp set.

These are super quick to stamp, especially with the use of a stamping platform. If you use a medium stamping platform it is possible to position both the pines and the coordinating sentiment in the same platform to stamp and repeat to mass produce a batch of cards!

For the 'Merry' card I have used Altenew Olive & Moss inks from the Tropical Forest collection for the pines, Ruby Red from the Red Cosmos collection and Aqualicious from the Sweet Dreams collection for the bauble.  I added some glitter dimensional to the bauble for a little sparkle, always a good addition to Christmas cards. 

For my second card using the 'Peace' sentiment I decided to mix up the colours a little and add in some Rubellite from the Cherry Blossom collection.

This time I decided to add two hanging baubles, but this time I added glitter dimensional to the berries within the pines. The bases for both cards is my favourite Hero Hues Paradise card. My apologies for using this colour, that is currently out of stock :( 

That's all from me today, I hope I have inspired you with your last minute Christmas card ideas!

Crafty Hugs 

Bev

Products Used:-

Getting Ahead for Christmas

So as you know, we have friends staying this weekend, so I had to make sure I had my projects made ahead of time this week as I won't be in the craft room this weekend - I'll be flying kites and playing football golf instead!

So whilst I had the Avery Elle Christmas release on my desk the other week I went ahead and made a couple more cards in my effort to not be making Christmas cards on Christmas eve this year!

Firstly I was itching to get the two part greenery and sentiment set Peaceful Pines inked up, you've probably picked by now that for me Christmas cards have to be quick to make and I generally don't have time to "colour" images so I do love a quick stamp and go set that has lots of impact and this set does it for me!

I stamped it with a dark green ink directly onto a white 6x4 card leaving a little space to add some patterned paper (from the new Merry and Bright pad from Simple Stories which is simply divine but I forced myself to actually cut it up!) above and below.  I then used a slightly lighter marker and did some quick flick strokes over the top to give the pines some extra depth and then went to town with some double embossing on the sentiment and berries.  I embossed them first in a standard red powder for colour and then stamped and embossed them again on top with red glitter powder.  I find you get more impact that way as the glitter powders don't have enough solid colour for my taste.  You could just stamp in red first then add the glitter embossing on top but I like the depth you get from double embossing.   A couple of tiny strips of red glitter then tie the whole card together.

For my second card I went for something even quicker!  One of the trees from Quirky Christmas as a focal point over an ink blended stripe.

I was inspired by the sentiment in the set and wanted that to be the focus so trimmed the tree with scissors the white border I got from die cutting didn't look right when I wrapped my "tinsel" around the tree.  The tinsel in this case is actually a glittery pipe cleaner which you can find quite inexpensively in most kids craft departments or on that big online store that used to only sell books ;-)  I used some gel glue to stick it to the card then stamped the sentiment up close to finish.

Hope that gives you some more ideas for quick and easy Christmas cards that have a big impact.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• This week we will have a very large delivery from Hero Arts with the entire Winter catalogue available.
• We will have the latest release from Sugar Pea Designs too.
•  Stamping Bella's winter release is coming shortly and our order is in so watch this space for that in a few weeks - fans of the new odd balls will not be disappointed with the new winter characters!

Enjoy the rest of your bank holiday weekend.

Tara