Last Minute Inspiration

Every year I promise myself I won't leave Christmas things to the last minute, and every year that's how it turns out. This year I wouldn't even have sent out Christmas cards, but as my dearest set to write some cards, I thought that as a card crafter I simply cannot skip that duty. But to my shame, we did send out some shop-bought cards in addition to some handmade ones, and the majority of cards I had were from the stash I made inspired by our Christmas in July event over at STAMPlorations. Future me, please take note for next year...

I made a batch of snowflake tags for my presents this year. I used Stitched Tags Nesting dies on offcuts of kraft card which had been laying around in my UFO box forever. I stamped the lovely snowflakes using Stampin' Up Endless Wishes and heat embossed them in white. I added some of the small sentiments from the same stamp set which I stamped on a scrap piece of blue card. These were really quick to mass-produce and I think they matched the wrapping paper really well.

Anyhow, I have tried to be a bit more thoughtful about gift wrapping this year. I bought some recycled wrapping paper without any glitter or foil so it's compostable or recyclable. However, I had one very big gift and it would have used up the whole roll of that wrapping paper, so instead, I decided to use some of the brown paper that you get with your Amazon parcels. I simply smoothed out the paper and stamped the lovely images from Joyful in Distress Oxides. (sorry about the horrible pictures, this was literally last minute late in the evening...) 

I then added some nice festive ribbon, which can be re-used over and over (I already had tons of this in my stash, so no new ribbon was bought for any of the presents this year). I used a scrap of the store-bought wrapping paper, and die cut a tag using Stitched Tags Nesting dies, which I attached to a tag I had die cut from scrap cardboard from a chocolate bar! I used one of the Christmas Sentiments dies to cut the red sentiment. Super easy and super quick!

I also used some scraps of the store-bought wrapping paper (waste not, want not and all of that) which I die cut using the Crazy Double Running Stitch Rectangle Nesting Dies and added the same sentiment using Christmas Sentiments and adhered everything to a cardbase made from some beautiful handmade paper.

I created a variation on the theme using vellum as the card base and added a hand-lettered greeting inside the card. 

That is a wrap on all my Christmas presents this year (apart from something I ordered from a shop which said they would guarantee delivery by Christmas, but yesterday I got an email to say it won't make it after all. I'm really annoyed, but I guess there are bigger problems in the world after all).

Stamps: Stampin' Up Endless Wishes, STAMPlorations Joyful

Dies: CUTplorations Crazy Double Running Stitch Rectangle Nesting Dies, Stitched Tags Nesting dies and Christmas Sentiments

Earth day recycled cards

As my mojo has been AWOL for a while, I thought I would try something a bit different to get my brain back into crafting gear. This weeks challenge over at Shopping Our Stash is "Happy Earth Day" and that means up-cycle or recycle something. The idea is that craft hoarders tend to collect a lot of stuff you mean to use later, but it all just ends up in the ever growing stash. And I have to admit to this, I tend to collect lots of things I think I could use for crafting, but most of the time they end up forgotten in the stash. I also have loads of random mismatched cardstock that I never seem to get around to using. When I started crafting I got a huge box of mixed craft stuff from a friend and I have used a lot of it, but there are bits and bobs that have stayed lying around, particularly some really nice cardstock that sadly has some imperfections here and there, so I haven't quite figured out what to do with it. And this challenge came in perfect.

The cards are made from a drawing from a box of chocolates. I just cut the drawing into two panels and applied a lot of Stickles to bling it up a bit. I matted the drawing onto some of my left over cardstock, cleverly avoiding the imperfections. The letters are die cut from the same purple sparkly cardstock using the Tim Holtz inside out alphabet die. I felt I got away a little too easy with basically just gluing stuff on for these cards, so I also added some die cuts to the inside of the cards. 

I think the cards turned out quite nice although they are quite simple. They would work as an invitation, birthday card or as a "just because" card. And it feels nice to have actually used something from my stash instead of just expanding it all the time.

Cardstock: Leonardo Stationery 350 g Smooth White cardstock, leftover purple cards from my stash, Drawing from Hotel Chocolate box
Other: Ranger Ice Stickles in Coffee Ice and Ranger Tim Holtz Distress stickles in Dusty Concord, Spun Sugar, Mustard Seed and Spiced Marmelade, Tim Holtz Alterations inside out alphabet die, Tim Holtz alterations Vintage Lace die, Nellie's multiframe's MFD020 die