Christmas Card Challenge

 

Can you feel it?  Fall is definitely in the air around here, and with it the reminder that Christmas will be here before we know it.  Like many of you, I like to make my own Christmas cards, and I like to make them all unique.  Time, of course, can become a challenge - especially if you're as slow at making cards as I am at times.  So, what can we do to speed up our card making?  One way is to challenge ourselves to see how many cards we can make from one set of papers. 

I did that for myself recently, and I'll show you some of them here.  I chose 5 small papers, a red-green-cream pattern, three green patterns, and a red sponged type pattern (I think they were 9" x 7").  To these I added a bit of coordinating solids in dark green, red, and white, and various embellishments from my stash.  I still have enough paper to make several more, but I'll share five I made this way.  The 5th one is a bit of a SURPRISE, so watch for it! :-)

This first one is probably my favorite. I love the stamped image. However, I didn't have the forest green ink I really needed - it was a bit more on the yellow side.  So, I stamped it first with the green I had - then went over the leaves and vines with a pen.  That left just a bit showing of the original ink - which somehow started looking more like the background color in the patterned paper and pulled it all together well. A few dots of red Stickles really set it off nicely.

The second card uses 4 of the 5 patterned papers - and a tag I had in my stash whose color just fit perfectly:

While I didn't take a picture of it, this card is also decorated inside using strips of the same papers you see on the front of it.

Next up is another using only 3 of the 4 papers I used in the previous card.  I used another tag from my stash, but this time I cut it in half, putting half at the top and half at the bottom of the card.  I used Liquid Pearls on the stamped focal to help the garland and star stand out nicely.

Fourth up is this green one.  I love the tree stamp.  After stamping it in green, I used an opaque white pen to color in the snow on the branches, then covered that with clear Stickles.  I really liked the effect.  I wasn't as happy with the way the stamped pine cones turned out.  Looking at them again, I think perhaps a touch of black pen for a tiny bit of shading/definition might help.  Perhaps I'll go back and try that.  (On the other hand, perhaps I'll just leave it as is - sounds like work!)

And now for the SURPRISE:

After making the Christmas tree card, I got to thinking that the colors in that card wouldn't have to be just for Christmas.  I knew I needed a birthday card - so I made one!

Like I said, I still have enough of the paper left to make several more cards.  It's fun seeing how different I can make cards that all come from the same few papers!

I'd love to see what you've done with this challenge.  Blogger doesn't make it real easy to share your work, but you can add a link in your comment that takes us to your pictures.  To do that you need to type the following:

          <a href="address">name</a>

Just copy your link and put it between the quotes where it says address, and put the name you are calling your link where it says name.  HOWEVER, make sure it is all one color.  I colored part of it red so you could see the code.  If I hadn't, you would have just seen the word name as a link!!!

For example, if I wanted to show a link to the home page of my blog, I would type:
    <a href="http://cheringpapermemories.blogspot.com/">Cher-ing Paper Memories</a>

If I had typed that all in one color, you would have seen this: Cher-ing Paper Memories