Christmas Cards 2013 Leftovers: 3 tall ones

3 tall Christmas cards on a brown kraft paper base :) - one of my favourite card blank formats

I've also discovered that cream coloured laces look good on the natural brown paper :) I'm never bored with the Christmas theme. I could keep on making festive cards all year round!

Christmas Cards 2013 (16) - Leftovers: Knitted and cosy

Just to say a quick "hello" as I'm catching up with the blog posts. Here are some more Vintage Scandinavian cards I made for Christmas 2013. My aim was to make them as cosy and country-side like as possible hence ginghams, tartans and knitted patterns. 

 I loved working on all those little cards details :)

This knitted heart stamp belongs to my favourites now :)

...and there's something about the red tartan I can take my eyes off :)

And a couple of vintage cards with lots of Christmas green colour. Just a nice break-off from Scandinavian reds and whites

I'm currently working on some crochet projects and will be updating you very soon! Anybody thinking of spring crafting already? :)

Christmas Cards 2013 (14): Scandinavian Vintage (1) Nisse

I swear I will bore you to death with  my Christmas cards. Sorry my dear blog readers, I'm not done with my festive ones yet LOL  How on earth have I managed to make so many this year? I must have been at the full throttle with my creative mojo. Definitely a proper big production this year.

This time it's a style of cards I've really taken to and I would call it, let's say Scandinavian vintage. Remember this post about my stamp printed papers? I used then my "jumper style" stamps to create the  cosy "knitted" backgrounds and I thought they would look good on the vintage type of Christmas cards. 

Scandinavian Nisse (the Norwegian word for gnomes) are the focal point in those cards. Do I have to add that I thoroughly enjoyed myself composing those cards? I have a feeling I'll come back to this style next year with some more vintage images. Those I used come from Pinterest and ultimately they are the images printed on the vintage Scandinavian postcards.

My God Jul stamp from Panduro seemed the be just perfect for this occasion.

A bit unusual Christmassy tones over here - mostly gold and brown and cream - suited to the colours in the picture. As I was making this card, I thought about one of my colleagues who doesn't like traditional Christmas decorations because they bring her bad memories about lost dad and brother. She never sets up any Christmas tree in her house. She was very pleased when she received this card.

Thank you for your comments x

Background builders

This week in the evenings I've been busy making (again!) some more vintage Scandinavian Christmas cards as well as making my own stamped backgrounds using my inks and stamps. This is such fun! I'm thoroughly enjoying myself at the card making paper production. There's a new trend in the stamping world - a new type of stamps sometimes called "background builders" or "backgrounders" - these are sets of stamps coordinated in style/theme that are used to build your own scenery on a card. They allow for the personalization of a card - you choose where and how to stamp and in what order and how much. So I've had those 4 gorgeous stamps sets with the Nordic theme from The Waltzing Mouse Stamps and the knitted pattern stamps from  WPlus9 Studio Design and it was a perfect moment to put those stamps into practice. So this week I've been stamping these:

I experimented with various colours and shades. By accident, using a thick chalky ink that didn't stamp too crisp, I discovered how to achieve a shaded knitted pattern by stamping two patterns - one on top of  the other. One fills it with a faded colour, the other gives it a defining outline. I thought the coffee brown knitted pattern will look cosy and warm on my cards ;) I really look forward to making cards with these impressions. 

I was very pleased with how these images came out on card as it can be tricky to get a good even impression from the big-sized stamps. I had to use super long acrylic blocks for these borders. I also used some stamping advice from the stamping expert The Waltzing Mouse website and it did work for me this time. I'm going to cut those papers up into smaller backgrounds and perhaps use some cutting dies and punches on them. The thing I love about those background builders is that there are so many possibilities with these stamps. You can make monochromatic patterns as well as multicoloured ones. You can use the papers as backgrounds, punch various shapes out of them or simply cut them up into decorative borders or create your own gift wraps too!

(Early) Christmas Cards 2013 (2)

Some more of my Christmas cards I made this year :) A continuation of those Christmas cards.  Kinda fun to make wintery cards on hot days of June and July :)

And all 7 together :)

On my summer holidays in 5 working days - woohoo! Can't wait! There will be so much time to craft and create! Counting down already!

(Early) Christmas Cards 2013 (1)

Yes, I'm one of those crafters who follow the voice of their heart when it comes down to crafting. Basically I hate deadlines and I like to create whatever takes my fancy. As long as I enjoy it, it's great. Out of season crafting is perfectly normal for me - stitching Christmas cross stitch cards in the middle of July is fine for me. Knitting Christmas balls around Easter is ok too and so is making Easter stuff right after the New Year :) And since I enjoy making Christmas stuff a lot, so today, well... it's time to show my first Christmas cards this year. I've made 7 so far and showing the first 4 :)

With so many new craft toys for Christmas at home like stamps, punches and dies, I just couldn't simply wait any longer and had to have a go at them. :) As every year, I plan to make over 20 Christmas cards to send out to family and friends. This year my beloved Scandi-theme continues as usual with an added feel of knitted coziness in a form of backing papers and stamps featuring the trendy knitted pattern. Doily and cross stitch motifs are so in these days and they will be showing up in my cards as well. Naturally,  there will be lots of red, white, cream, green and brown :)

Below, the Himalayan Snowflake punch from Martha Stewart in action :)

The backing papers I used for all these cards are Marianne's Designs, series:  Eline's Warm Winter Wishes. I blogged about them earlier on - click! The heat embossed snowflake stamp comes from this A Muse Studio stamp set - click! 

Inking and embossing together - another great way to show off your stashed embossing folders

More Christmas cards coming soon! :)
Linking up and joining a blog hop tonight at Hand-made Monday!

Craft papers with a Scandi feel

Thought I'd share it with you. If you are a crafter in love with Scandi themes, like I am, and planning to have a Scandinavian Christmas, you may love these nice scrapbooking papers :) They are a Marianne's Designs brand; paper collections: Eline's Warm Winter Wishes and Eline's Scandinavian Winter. I bought them from the Cuddly Buddly online store. They are sets of 32 loose sheets, each with 8 different designs.

Eline's Warm Winter Wishes collection is all about knitted patterns (incl. one crocheted pattern), so typical of  the Scandinavian decor. They are the cosy browns, reds and creams /whites. I've already made 2 Christmas cards with them and also used the granny squares background paper for my folky cards (see the previous posts) :) 

Eline's Scandinavian Winter papers have got more snowy, frosty look with Scandinavian stars, snowflakes and Danish hearts patterns. They will also look fabulous as background on your festive cards.

I'm really looking forward to using these papers and getting my festive card making in the full swing :)
Today in the UK the sun's out despite the chill. Yay! Have a nice weekend everyone!