Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas

Hey stampers, Anni here!

I have a quick and easy Christmas card for those of you who might need a last minute card.

Overhere in Germany we celebrate (or should I say we start celebrating) Christmas on the 24th of december. So I started by die cutting a 2 and a 4 using Altenew's Mega Numbers. I love these numbers and I bought the whole bundle and haven't regret it yet.

I added ink blending in red, pink and orange and darker red only to the edges.

Then I stamped three penguins from Mama Elephant's Little Penguin Agenda with an alcohol marker friendly black ink. I coloured the penguins in a cold grey and for the other things like scarf, feet, beak, beely etc. I chose colours that went well with the colour of the 24. To cut out the penguins there are coordinating dies available.

For the panel I die cut a scallop rectangle from Mama Elephant's Framed Tags: Waverly from white cardstock. I adhered the 24 and the penguins with dimensional adhesive. Because it looked a bit boring, I stamped some small snowflakes I found in Avery Elle's Snow Much Fun set.

For the sentiment I chose one from my go to set of this season: Mama Elephant's Holiday Messages. I heat embossed it in white on a stripe of grey cardstock.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

               

Floating Angel

I fell hook line and sinker for this new Angel Wings set from Neat and Tangled - I just love the coy angel with her hands behind her back, her bold sister is cute too but I just loved her shy look.  I decided to make a really simple card and have her floating in a window on it.

I stated with the background adding some sequin stars from my stash around a sentiment from Mama Elephant's Holiday Messages to keep it all really simple.  I die cut a frame from foam and some subtle patterned paper and set it aside whilst I concentrated on the Angel.

She was coloured with copics in soft blue-greens and then I added lots of fine glitter to her wings and halo.  I die cut her with the co-ordinating die and cut a second plain white die cut to aid the floating element.  I simply added a loop of white sewing cotton between the two die cut layers and sandwiched the other end of the cotton between the paper and foam layers of the frame.  This allows her to float and swing by keeping her a little off the front of the base card.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

The MFT penguins we ordered sold out in under 2 hours even though we bought a lot - obviously more popular that we guessed for a new designer, so we managed to dive back in and buy more before MFT sold out - they should be here by Tuesday customs willing!   Use the out of stock notification system to be told the second they arrive back - just add your email (make sure you type it correctly) to the box on any out of stock item and the system emails you as soon as we get it back.

The new oxide colours have shipped from Ranger so will be in store this week - not sure what day yet - all depends on customs clearance - watch our Facebook Page for news of its arrival.

Avery Elle restocks should be here early this week too.

We have some new papers and stencils from Echo Park which will be in store on Monday.

That's for today.

Happy Crafting

Tara

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