A Month And A Day

It had to happen eventually, I know, but it sure does seem to have come around awfully fast - the last of our Christmas stamp-a-stack classes, that is. With only a month and a day until Christmas itself (scary thought, let's not go there!), it's time to get these bad boys written, addressed and in the mail!

Our first card is one I made last year when I was on the Splitcoaststampers Creative Crew design team and my ladies love it so much they wanted to re-create it. Using non-traditional colours, this was a CASE of a lovely card by Mel Sharp of Melbourne. Here tis:

Materials used:

• stamps - Four the Holidays, Christmas Collectibles
• card - basic black, very vanilla
• other - holiday ornaments framelits, pearls, Big Shot, dimensionals, stamp-a-ma-jig, embroidery thread (non SU)

Our second card is newly designed and inspired by a couple of cards around the www. It uses one of our new photopolymer sets and I really did love being able to see exactly where I was stamping. I used my aqua painter to brush an ink wash for the sky, then when that was dry, coloured the cardinal and trees using markers - fast and easy! To me, the Decorative Dots embossing reflects the snow falling effect, although DD16 disagreed! What do you think?

Materials used:

• stamps - White Christmas
• card - basic black, watercolour, whisper white, Baja breeze
• other - pennant punch, bakers twine, aqua painter, dimensionals, real red and crumb cake markers, on film framelits, Big Shot, decorative dots embossing folder

We only have one more class this year and our annual Christmas Dinner to look forward to - and this year I have challenged my ladies to make a decoration for home or tree. Can't wait to see what they come up with!

Meanwhile, we'll be toiling in the heat today - we are expecting 39 degrees Celsius today! Might be kinda nice to be making a winter-themed card! Lol!

Thanks for calling in.

Cheers

Kez

Christmas Aussie Style

This month there's an Aussie theme to our Christmas stamp-a-stack cards and as you know we celebrate Christmas in the middle of summer. Schools have a break of about 6-8 weeks and the most popular holiday destination is the beach (hence the picture above!).

My first card was inspired by a Kathy Tanner creation and features an iconic Aussie item seen everywhere over the long, hot Christmas holiday season - thongs (jandals/flip flops). I thought it would be lots of fun if there were thongs hanging on the tree instead of baubles! Lol! 

Materials used:

• stamps - Sunny Fun (retired), Four the Holidays (retired)
• card - island indigo, cherry cobbler, whisper white
• other - blender pen, Sahara sand marker, Big Shot, stylish stripes embossing folder, ruler

Our second card features a carolling kookaburra. The wording on the background is "have a dinky di, true blue, beaut Christmas".

Materials used:

• stamps - Short & Sweet (retired)
• card - real red, very vanilla, soft suede, watercolour
• other - window framelits, Big Shot, sponge daubers, dimensionals
• non SU - kookaburra stamp, red satin ribbon, true blue stamp

Thanks for popping by.

Cheers
Kez

I Know You Don't Want To Hear This, But ...

...... Christmas is coming!

Oh, yeah, you know it - once we hit July, it's a downhill run from there! LOL! And as papercrafters we know what that means ... start your Christmas cards!

This month we started our Christmas stamp-a-stack classes and here are the two cards we made:

I loved using non-traditional colours for this case from my upline Marelle.

Materials used:

• stamps - Dasher, Four the Holidays
• card - crumb cake, whisper white, perfect plum, concord crush
• other - Petals A Plenty embossing folder, scallop trim border punch, white taffeta ribbon, white gel pen, dimensionals

A simple design for this one so there was time to do the colouring in. Love this cute little image!

Materials used:

• stamps - Greeting Card Kids
• card - cherry cobbler, very vanilla, watercolour
• other - Kaiser designer paper, nestabilities die, dimensionals

And not for class but just for my own collection, I also played around with the ever popular Lovely as a Tree for this card:

Materials used:

• stamps - Lovely as a Tree, Four the Holidays
• card - always artichoke, creamy caramel, very vanilla
• other - Kaiser designer paper, nestabilities die, dimensionals, square punch

It's almost time for August's class, so I'll be back soon with more Christmas cards. You better get started on yours!

Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers
Kez

Robins and Gingerbread Men

This is the Christmas card I made for my customers this year. I have been so busy with classes that I had to sit down at the last minute and make them all in one go! So it had to be a relatively easy design but something that they hadn't seen already in classes or here on my blog.

It's been a while since I used my bird punch (he's getting jealous at all the attention the owl punch is getting, LOL!) but I think it makes a gorgeous Robin Red Breast here.

Not the best photo I'm afraid - I forgot to take one before I put them all in envelopes, so had to snap this one at the restaurant where we had our Christmas get together! It does look much better IRL.

We all wore something Christmassy on our heads to the dinner, so I'll share with you how crazy I looked in my selection, seen here with Lynne. We were voted the best two!

Saw these glasses at our Reject Shop and couldn't resist them! Lynne's Xmas lights necklace lit up, so she was flashing all night. It was loads of fun and I'm looking forward to another great year of crafting with all my lovely ladies.

Back soon with some non-Christmas goodies! Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez

Secret Santa

Our SU team has a Christmas dinner every year and we all get allocated a person to be Secret Santa for. We don't spend a lot on gifts, but most of the fun is in the packaging and wrapping and making the present look totally gorgeous.

I was SS for Rachel and these are the gifts I made for her:

Here are the packets individually:

The decorated glass bauble from yesterday's post

A box containing gift tags

A container of Smooch Spritz (looks like a Toblerone!)

Some Xmas ribbons in a small window box

A mini bag in a box with shimmer paint inside

Three spray bottles to use for water or shimmer paint

Tubes filled with antique brads, brads and label holders from hodgepodge hardware and Christmas coloured jelly beans and I made a box to store them in.

Phew! So many photos - I'll have to come back another day to show you the beautiful things my SS gave me!

Have a great day.

Cheers

Kez

Checking It Twice

I was making a number of Christmas cards yesterday, so it should come as no surprise that I've got a Christmas themed owl card to show you!

This started off as something completely different in my head, but once I got the Santa suit on him, it just snowballed from there. I've used the adorable mini library clips again (DH loves these!) and although Santa's belt buckle is a little oversized, it looks good, don't you think? Gotta leave room for some expansion after all the milk and cookies!

The Christmas Cocoa designer papers (in the Welcome Christmas bundle with FREE ribbon) were just perfect to match and the sentiment comes from Four the Holidays, expanda-punched with the word window punch. (You know, where the sentiment is too long for the punch, so you slide it in the back of the punch. Leave me a comment if you are not familiar with this and would like a tutorial.)

So back to the card and here he is:

He he! Sooooooo cute! Now you might just want to click on the photo to get a closer look at the Naughty and Nice lists to see where your name is ........!!! LOL! I'm on the Nice list of course! :P

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a good one!

Cheers
Kez

Cards For Our Troops

It's only 4 sleeps now until my very special event making Christmas cards for Aussie troops serving overseas in combat zones to send home to their families and loved ones. All stations are GO! (as Thunderbirds would say!) and I've a few things still to organise, so will be MIA for a few days here on the blog.

These are the card designs for everyone to make; I kept them as simple and straightforward as I could without being too plain (IYKWIM):

We have some fantastic raffle prizes and lucky door prizes to give away, thanks to the generosity of Stampin' Up!, my upline Marelle Taylor and fellow demos Juliette Chapman, Nikki Stalker and Robyn Irving. So I am looking forward to a fun day for a wonderful cause and I'll be back next week.

Have a good one!

Cheers
Kez