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