First snow

Do you remember, the eerie light, the night the first snow covers the world outside? Like light coming from everywhere, a soft illumination…

Ofcourse nothing like my card!

This is my 2nd entry for the Chocolate Baroque Colour Challenge # 15

Here is the piece of paper it came from:

I wanted to use it as it was there, with the distressed edges. But it wasn’t right.

Nicely framed with grey and straight lines is better, more view onto a scene like this.

Also here, I’ve been doubting about a sentiment, or something else. The card makes me feel a bit.. what is the word… melancholic inside, a memory with a touch of sadness. I prefer to make happy cards, not melancholic ones, as I want people to be a bit happier when they receive a card. But maybe it doesn’t have this effect on others, so it’s good like this. Thanks for visiting again! Let’s see if I can make the 3rd post in time as well.

An orange-squeezing christmas tree

I guess that’s why there is so much orange juice on the card. The cogs get a bit rusty from it, maybe even moldy. Guess orange juice is a bit too acid to just squeeze between cogs.

I’m going to present to you a batch of christmas cards. The colours (maybe the talk of oranges gave it away allready) come from a colour challenge: Chocolate Baroque colour challenge 4

 

Yes. You can make Christmas cards with these colours, all you need to do is pile up some cogs and splash em with these colours. One of the next batch of cards is my entry.The cards are very similar so I didn’t think it was necessary to post them seperately, ofcourse I’ll choose one to be the representative of the group. And I think it will be this one:

 

I inked the stencil (Crafters Workshop) with ripe persimmon, sprayed with a bit of water and pressed onto the paper (I made a larger sheet and cut it up later). I stamped again with the stencil next to this one, you’ll see on the other cards. Let dry and continue 4 days later. Add ripe persimmon to your craftsheet and use a waterbrush to colour the stars and other white areas.

Stamp the tree with stazon, use the picked fence distress marker to colour the cogs, heat emboss “happy newyear” with copper embossing powder.

This is originally a piece of the paper of the second stamping of the stencil – it was very light. So I laid down the stencil again and coloured in the stars.

Next I stamped the tree again, and put distress ink (ripe persimmon, spicy marmalade, barn door, maybe some more) onto my craft sheet and coloured with my waterbrush, mixing the colours. I coloured the open spaces with a milled lavender marker. The white between the tree was a bit too white so coloured it a bit more. Next I inked up one of the flowery corner stamps of the same set, with two colours of distress ink, and sprayed it with water and stamped. The first print wasn’t good at all, so I restamped (without positioning it well, I wasn’t really bothering about preciseness, this would be a shabby grungy fast range of christmas cards – I’ve got about 40 to go still! No time for neat cards…) I disliked the blurry restamping anyway, so sprayed water over it to make it more blurry, and liked that effect. I stamped and heatembossed Noel.

On this one you can see a big bold background stamp, it’s added over the stars stencil print as that was too light to make a nice background. The big bold background was stamped with milled lavender. Next I stmaped and heat embossed the tree with red embossing powder, coloured with ripe persimmon and black sooth and added the sentiment “happy new year”

Chocolate baroque colour challenge entry #2

Ofcourse I inked up all the edges of the cards, if I had a marker in the right colour (such as the milled lavender one) I drew around the edge and used the waterbrush to soften the edges o the line.

 

Three trees, the first for christmas. I loveed making them this way, no hassle over colouring precisely inside the lines, or colours fading into eachother. A perfect style for batches of cards 🙂 I made 5 more in this colour setting, 3 big ones and 2 matching smaller ones, so stay tuned!

Christmas (2013) in August (2014)

I found a memory card with some pictures of unposted cards on it, including my christmas / new years collection.

 

I think I sent about 40% of the cards between christmas and new year’s eve, and 35% before 5th of January, and the last 25% never got made or sent… (sorry friends/family who didn’t get a card, I was just too tired and too busy to craft! Adress selection was quite random, I always print out all adresses on labels, so I won’t forget relatives or friends. Adresses that are near me aren’t printed as well, as I deliver these cards myself. Still, they are written in that adressdocument too. I noticed less people are sending cards now with Christmas or new year. I don’t exactly mind, as it has become a routine for many people, it has lost it’s meaning. Still, many people don’t receive cards from me except for this time of year, and those that do get birthday cards are quite close to me, so I want to make them something special too. So, I still continue to make “hurray the longest night has passed, we welcome a new year and hope for a good harvest” cards. (The original meaning of the feast, which was adopted by the Christian church).

So, what did I make last year?

Here’s a gallery:

I loved making these cards, quite easy and fast to make, and looked good too!

These took a little more time to make, using Chocolate Baroque stamps , and embossing folder and a Marianne Design cutting die.

The idea is that the receivers could take out the angel, fold it and place it or hang it in their tree or on their cardsdisplay.

Kerst (Christmas) from a Marianne Design die.

The circles were cut out with a Nellie Snellen multiframe die. Stamps still CB.

Finally used special paper – I always find it hard to use it.

Various different cards, made while at my partents house so a limited supply of crafting materials (only 1 very efficiently packed crate…)

I thought I had made more of these angel wing cards… maybe after I took photo’s?

I still did try to vary a bit. I made a self adhesive mask for the glass, and embossed some glasses.

I liked the glass from Sheena Douglas a little bit magical (forgot the name of the subset) – Thought it was fitting for these Happy New Year- cards (as it was past Christmas allready)

Placing the stencil, spraying glimmer mist on it…

Also with dylusions ink spary, although that bled more underneath the stencil, more ink coming out when spraying.

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