January Christmas cards: Believe

We've had plenty of snow and cold weather in my neck of the woods over the last few weeks, so it wasn't too hard to get in the mood for making this month's Christmas cards, And, to be honest, we still had up all our Christmas decorations when I was making these cards. We're finally getting everything put away this weekend. We like to decorate for Christmas around the middle of December and then leave everything up for a good chunk of January to bring a little light and joy to the dark winter.

But, back to the cards. Earlier in the month, I came across a card maker on Instagram who created a monthly Christmas card challenge. Each month has a specific theme (e.g., snowflakes, stars), technique (e.g., one layer, watercolor), or type of product (e.g., background stamp, stencil) to focus on for that month's card(s). For January, the theme was Santa, and here is my design:

I don't have a Santa image that I wanted to use, so I decided to focus on Santa's hat instead. The hat and brim are punched from glossy card stock, and I glued a tiny white pom pom on the end for texture. I loved the shiny red (which doesn't really come through in the picture), so I also used metallic striped vellum for a background layer and a few red sequins for embellishment.

To contrast the shine I used Crumb Cake card stock for the layer behind the hat and for the card base. (These are note card size, 3-1/2" x 5", so they are smaller than the usual A2 size.) I embossed "believe" with white embossing powder.

I made 11 of this card design, so I'm off to a good start for this year's Christmas cards. I don't know that I'll use the challenge every month, but it's nice to have a starting point if I need some inspiration.

Thanks for stopping by!

Pandemic postcard exchange

Hello! I know a month ago I said I was going to take a break from my blog. And it’s been nice to just create over the past few weeks without worrying about supplies or pictures or whether something was good enough to post.

But I think, more specifically, that I needed to get away from believing I had to post certain things in a certain way at certain times. One of the reasons I started my blog was because I’ve always wanted to be on a design team, and a blog was a way to get my work “out there.” So I tried to post regularly and have thorough supply lists, etc. As time went on, though, design teams seemed less and less likely (for a variety of reasons), so my blog just came to be a chore.

As it turns out, though, I do have things I want to share, just in a less “formal” way. So for now that’s what I’m going to do: I’ll post when and if I have something to share, whenever that may be, and we’ll see how it goes.

Today I wanted to share a few postcards I created this morning. Last week I signed up for a postcard exchange (through a local letterpress studio) to just reach out to other people during the pandemic. I decided to make my own postcards, so this morning I cut some heavyweight white card stock into 4” x 6” pieces and tested out my Micron pens and alcohol markers. The markers didn’t smear the ink, and as long as I used a light hand and didn’t do much blending, the markers didn’t leak through the paper. Perfect!

Now I do not have great drawing skills (one of the reasons I enjoy stamping), so I settled on a few simple, doodle-y designs and just went for it. I started each postcard with a border, then drew the images/sentiments, and finally colored the designs in a scribble style using a bright, cheery color palette. On the back of each card I wrote my note on the left side and added lines for the recipient’s address on the right.

This was a fun Sunday morning project, and I may just make some more to send on my own. Thanks for stopping by!

Andrea

2022 desk calendars

Happy new year! I'm getting in just under the wire to post the desk calendars I made before the new year. This year I made two different styles: gel press prints and die cuts on patterned card stock. I didn't keep track of any supplies (I kept changing my mind and was in a time crunch at the end), so I just have the pictures. If you want to know the product or company name for anything, leave me a comment and I'll do my best to figure it out.

I'll start with the gel press print calendars. I made four of these, and each one is unique, so I'm going to share all four.

I've tried gel press printing before, but only a couple times, and I wasn't crazy about the results so I hadn't used my gel press in quite a while. I've been following a few gel press creators on Instagram, and when Taylored Expressions came out with a gel press printing kit a few months ago, I decided to go for it. (The kit comes with a gel press and tin to store it, paper, paint, a brayer, and a little bottle of hand sanitizer to clean the gel press.)

After my kit arrived, I set aside a couple of afternoons to just make prints. Before starting I gathered everything I needed. I pulled out a bunch of my stencils and found some additional texture tools -- bubble wrap, sponges, mesh bags, the plastic discs from inside rolls of tape, basically anything that could make an interesting shape or texture. I also set up a little cleaning station made up of a plastic bin half filled with warm soapy water and a couple of towels laid out. After I used a stencil I tossed it in the water, and once there were several stencils in the bin I rubbed off any remaining paint and set them on the towels to dry. I changed the water in the bin when it got too dirty.

Over the course of my two gel printing sessions, I went through all of the paper that came in the kit as well as the extra pack I purchased separately! I found it was a lot easier to create the more I did. I definitely didn't love every print -- there were a few where I just went one step too far -- but overall I was really pleased with how they came out. One of my biggest challenges was having enough space on my table to lay out the pages to dry. :)

Quick side note: When I purchased the kit, I also got a link to a special YouTube video created by Lydia Fiedler that walked through the items in the kit and had lots of tips and tricks. If you haven't checked out Lydia's creations before, I highly recommend it. She is an amazing artist and has so many ideas and videos on her blog and YouTube channel. (I took a class with Lydia at a stamping event a couple of years ago, and it was so much fun.)

The gel press printing kit comes with five large tubes of paint -- I don't remember all the official color names, but there is a pink, yellow, blue, white, and pearlescent -- and all of these calendar pages were made with only those colors. That's kind of mind boggling to me, but it goes to show you that you don't need a ton of supplies to have fun and create.

Once I had used up all my paper, I had the difficult task of deciding which pages to use for the calendars. I changed my mind and rearranged pages so many times! I tried to avoid including more than one page within a calendar that used the same stencil. I also wanted a variety of color combinations, and I tried to pick seasonal images or colors for each month. (I set aside all the gel prints I didn't use for calendar pages, and I might try cutting them up for card backgrounds or use them for die cuts.)

I cut a 4" x 6" mat of black card stock for each calendar page and then trimmed the gel prints to slightly smaller than that so the mat created a narrow black frame. You might notice that for two of the calendars I also matted the monthly calendar pieces with black card stock. I did that for two of the calendars and then decided it looked fine without that layer. (I was also getting tired of cutting black card stock.)

One of the challenges for me with these calendars is that I didn't do any kind of focal image. I thought about adding sentiments or some kind of embellishment, but eventually I decided that I wanted to prints to stand by themselves, so I left them as is. And I'm really glad with that decision!

 

For the last five calendars I needed to make, I wanted to go with something quick and easy. (Ha! That never seems to work out for me.) I started with a pack of 12" x 12" printed card stock and went from there. Here are the finished pages:

 

(Sorry the colors are a little washed out in this photo. As it turns out, I hadn't taken any pictures of these calendars before I gifted them. Oops. Luckily I had given this calendar to my sister, so I was able to snap a quick photo of her pages.)

My first step was to choose twelve pages from the card stock pack and cut them into 4" x 6" pieces for the calendar page backgrounds. The pages themselves are definitely on the simpler side, but again, I kept changing my mind about the order of the pages and the die cuts I wanted to use, so it seemed like it took forever to make them. But looking at them now, I think they turned out pretty well.

I did add a few sparkling clear sequins to each page, although it's hard to see them in the photo. And a few of the pages are printed with glitter, so they have a little extra shine. My favorite pages are probably June and September because I really like the multi-color backgrounds.

Well, that's it for 2021! All in all, I can't say I'm sorry to see the year end; it's definitely been another tough one. Here's hoping for a more peaceful, less stressful 2022. Whatever the year holds for you, I wish you love, joy, and strength. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to "see" you again!

2021 Christmas card recap + blog update

Wow - Christmas Eve is just ten days away! I meant to post this little recap at the beginning of the month, but here we are. If you make holiday cards, you probably have them finished by this time, but if you do need to make any last-minute cards -- or maybe a gift tag or two -- here is a bit of inspiration for you. If nothing else, you can tuck away the ideas for next year.

Click on each month for the full post, including supply lists for the cards.

January: Gel print trees

February: Cards from calendars

March: Naughty or nice?

April: Polar bear parade

May: Toile silhouettes

June: Sparkly joy

July: Simple shimmer

I did make a few gift tags and last-minute cards last week (trying to use up some of the papers and embellishments in my stash), but I didn't take any photos to post. I was just having fun creating and didn't stop to write down supplies or take pictures.

On that note, I am going to take a break from my blog in the new year. For a variety of reasons it's been hard to keep up with it during the past couple of years, and I've felt guilty for not posting enough and then overwhelmed when I go through the photos of all the cards and projects that still need to be shared. Also, I've been struggling with crafting in general, and when I do have the time and energy, I want to spend it actually making things and not keeping track of supplies, setting up cards to take pictures, and sitting at the computer.

I'm not sure how long of a break I will take, or even if I will come back to my blog at all. I won't be taking it down or deleting anything, so I hope it continues to offer a bit of inspiration. I may still pop on here and there for a quick post, but I'm not giving myself any "rules" or schedules. And who knows, maybe after a couple of months I'll be ready to go again.

I am still planning at least one more post before the end of the month so I can share the desk calendars I made for Christmas gifts this year. Stay tuned for that. And if you're interested, you can find me on Instagram: @snippetsbyandrea. I honestly don't post there a ton, either, but I do check in every day. :)

Thanks for stopping by today -- and for the last ten years!

Houseplant card set

It's so hard to believe that Christmas is less than a month away. This year has simultaneously seemed to last forever and just fly by. I'm busy trying to get things in order for the holidays, so I haven't done much card making. (I have been making calendars, but I can't share those yet.) I wanted to get one more blog post in before December, so today I'm sharing a set of cards I made last summer. 

Supplies (all Stampin' Up! unless otherwise stated):
Stamps: Plentiful Plants
Paper: Thick Very Vanilla, Very Vanilla, Cajun Craze, Night of Navy, Dapper Denim, Old Olive, Garden Green, Emerald Envy card stock; First Edition Specialty Designer Series Paper (DSP); Kraft woodgrain card stock (Memory Box)
Ink: Cajun Craze, Night of Navy, Dapper Denim, Garden Green, Old Olive, Emerald Envy
Accessories: Perfect Plants dies, Art Glitter Glue (Art Impressions)

I think this set of cards is great for just about any occasion -- or no occasion at all -- and will work for men or women. The newsprint-style DSP makes a neutral background but still adds a lot of visual interest. I think an embossed card base would also look great for the background if you wanted something a little more subtle.

To make this set of cards, I chose three colors for the pots and three colors for the plants. I stamped and die cut the different images from the different colors, mixed and matched the pieces, and adhered them to the card bases. I like this technique for making sets of cards because while it's clear that all the cards go together, it's more fun for me than making multiples of the exact same design.

Thanks so much for stopping by!