Casing a very simple card

I saw these very simple cards and thought they were beautiful. I also thought I could copy them, so this is what I did:

The blue border is not part of my card, I just put it back there because the white card against the white of the scanner wasn't looking too good. And the photo looks as if I forgot to round one of the corners. I did not.

Around Thanksgiving I discovered some awesome local paper. I used a bit of it on a Christmas card. I hope to have time to make some more, although time is running very short! If anyone is reading this blog, you may be getting tired of seeing the ornament stamps. I didn't bring much with me in the way of Christmas stamps so I have to use them a lot. Sorry!


You might not be able to see the "Merry Christmas" on the front of the card. It is the only sentiment I used because, as I've said before, I'm not feeling very merry about Christmas this year. So I pretty much leave my insides blank and write a note in them.


~La

A Santa Card

I don't generally use Santa on cards, preferring to focus on Jesus at Christmas. However, I do have this one very old stamp with Santa (or a version of Santa) on it. The image fit nicely for this weeks Mojo Monday sketch, that was my sole motivation for using it!

This card is a conglomeration of supplies from so many companies! There is a stamp from Stampin' Up (the background), the Santa stamp of unknown origin purchased a thousand years ago, ribbon from who-knows-where, Stampin' Up paper, Creative Memories paper, Copic markers, SU markers, etc. Hmmm... nothing from Verve - the sponsor of Mojo Monday! Oops! I don't have any Christmas stamps from Verve yet and at the moment it's hard to do anything other than Christmas.

~La

Baby Card

I'm going to a baby shower today so needed a card to go with the gift. When we moved I must not have anticipated needing baby cards because I didn't bring any appropriate stamps with me. So coming up with an appropriate card was challenging. I did find this stamp within a set of stars. It says "Twinkle Twinkle little star do you know how loved you are" and "Baby" in the middle of the star. The recipient is choosing not to know the sex of the baby (Yeah for her!!!) so I couldn't use blue or pink. For some reason I also did not bring any basic yellow ink with me, or for that matter any babyish green. The closest I could come was Certainly Celery, which I think works.

My daughter badly wanted to help, so I told her to work on some designs while I looked for white cardstock. (Another thing I brought very little of. What was I thinking??) She actually started the polka dot idea and did something similar to this final version. It reminded me of a card I had done a couple of years ago so VOILA! - we had our starting point! I let my daughter stamp the polka dots and she did a great job. It was nice to be able to allow her to help.

Poinsettia Gift

I liked the poinsettia from my Fa La La card a few days ago, and I liked the coloring with copics on shimmery paper from my last post, so I combined the two and got a shimmery poinsettia. As I worked with paper placement I realized if I set the poinsettia at the top of the DP it looked like a Christmas present, so I continued the idea and used gold cording as a ribbon.


~La

It looks like the sentiment won't show here, so I'll quote it: Each day comes bearing it's own gifts, untie the ribbons

This card is not for any challenge. I was browsing some of my favorite stamping sites today and saw a note about stamping on shimmery papers. They said if you color the image with Copics the shimmer comes through. Well, I have some shimmery paper and I happen to have a few brand new Copics - my first ever! (I found them at a store here in Taipei so decided now is the time to try them.) It does look quite pretty, although I doubt any of the shimmer will show here. (What exactly IS showing here??) I was able to use some very old designer paper I've had sitting around. I think this may be some of the first paper I ever bought! Yeah me for finally using it!

~La

Today I went to Our Creative Corner for inspiration, and found a color challenge. The colors were gold, brown, rust and blue. No problem!

I used an image from one of my favorite old sets. It is so old in fact that I don't know what it's called. It's from SU and I looked through my old catalogs but couldn't find it. I call it "Hope is the Thing with Feathers" because that is part of the "sentiment" that is in the set. (It is also part of a poem by Emily Dickinson that I love.) Anyhow, I first stamped the French words background and clear embossed it, then stamped the main image, colored it a bit and clear embossed over it. Then I sponged a bit of blue around the image and the edges.

I'm not sure if I never bought Chocolate Chip paper or if I forgot to bring it with me, but in any case I couldn't find any. I have Close to Cocoa but that isn't rich enough with gold and rust. I managed to find this perfect piece of dark brown with polka dots (blue no less!) and thought it would be perfect. I thought I would crimp a strip of the polka dot to make it look like a ribbon but, alas, I left the crimper behind. Oh well, I like how this turned out!


~ La