Winter Snow Scene Card

This is a winter scene card I made for our elderly neighbors.  It was a little late for Christmas, but snow was still in the air, so I thought a snow scene might be nice.  The Liquid Applique makes beautiful snow.

The window was cut out and embossed with Labels 1 Nestabilities.  The corners are from a Nestabilities set as well.  I’ll have to look up the set, I am not sure what set they go with at the moment!

Sentiment inside:  JustRight Stampers

Making Bulk Assembly Line Style Christmas Cards

TIME FRAME:

This year, I started my Christmas cards in the fall.   It worked out a lot better and kept the mess out of my holidays.  Highly recommend if you need a lot of cards.  I need about 150 cards (huge family!)

MY GOALS:

I made some decisions based on last year’s card-making:

1. Avoid layers/mats/ribbon bows
2. Avoid two- step cut/embossing.  As pretty as nestabilities are, the layering took too much time and I had trouble finding matching product by the end to go with my colored images.
3. Use as little tape as possible (even at $1 tape rolls, I ate them up last year, think $30-$50.)
4. Imagine a streamlined design, yet one that allows modification to battle boredom.

MY FIRST STEP:

This fall, I first came up with a way to create a nesting point on the page.  I laid an Oval nestability on the card to emboss a focal area without cutting, without gluing, without matting.  Wow, that cut a lot of steps and still looked elegant.

Second, I found a couple “branch” stamps.  The final one was bought on the buy/sell/trade forum at splitcoaststampers.com.  I’ve had great experiences buying used stamps there.  The other branch came with a papertreyink set from a”Take a Bough” puchases at the BST at splitcoaststampers.com as well with ornaments included.  I may do “Ornaments2″  for  my cards next year?  LOL

This year, I borrowed a slim EK success ornament punch from a lady in our scrapping group.  It punched all three ornaments at one time!  I had a little trouble with it sticking at one point, but punches some wax paper through it and it did fine after that.  Changing up the papers helped provide a bit of variety without totally having different sets of cards.  After doing a few card versions last year, I rather liked doing  just one main version this year so that I knew what people were referring to when they commented on it.

I used mighty Dollar popdots instead of tape on some of the cards to add dimension.

On the solid ornaments, I used a gold pen or gold ink and tiny stamps to decorate the ornaments.  My favorite tiny stamps were from a Nativity set I had on hand.  I can’t determine the manufacturer from the slip sheet, but there is a SSC081, C. STM 2006 on it.  the star came from it.

I used JustRite Stamps on the inside for the sentiment, and a family signature stamp I had custom made from ebay for gifts and cards (best investment I’ve made in a while, and only about $10).

For the second batch, I ran out of punched ornaments and used a cut file for ornaments using SCAL software and my Cricut–worked great.

Supplies:

Cards from Hobby Lobby, with 40% off coupon or on sale…collect throughout the year.  Bulk cards on in sets of 50, I think.  I used both white or ivory to match the papers I had handy.

Papers:  Core-dinations Wine cardstock, the cover sheet for $1 paper (punched), and other random paper.

Tape: $1 dotliners (my favorite tape of all time, by Elmer’s.  I can no longer find it at this price.)

“Frost” Shimmer Spritz on some cards (very expensive, but I got it for my birthday from a friend.  I’ve since added water and eyeshadow and it’s still spraying.  It doesn’t go far, but added a nice snowy effect.  I added an oval shield around the spraying area, which made a cool inset of snow.)

Thanks for stopping by!

Fall Pumpkin Card Using Cricut and SCAL

I wanted to update and let you know some things I’m cutting with my Cricut lately using SCAL, or Sure Cuts a Lot Software in conjunction with my Cricut.  ”SCAL” is software which allows you to cut “.svg” files available for share free on the internet, any True Type Fonts (abbreviated TTF in the file names), OR many .jpg photo files!   Wow.  I know.  It’s just nuts.  You only need the cartridge that came with your machine inserted into it, and a connection to your computer…and they walk you through all that easy peasy!

To make this card with my Cricut and SCAL, I downloaded this cut file from Cheeky Magpie called “Filigree Pumpkin“.  I opened it using “import SVG” function in my Sure Cuts a Lot software, then sized it to the size of a card.  I then cut the filigree portion using Core-Dinations cardstock (my fav!), and cut a “blackout shadow” of the pumpkin for the orange background.  Then, I just matted, used some corner punches and a Martha Stewart punch, and finished it off with a JustRite sentiment, Nestability slide, ribbon, and gems!  I wanted a little more dimension to the flourishes on the pumpkin, so I traced with a gold gel pen.

I am loving my Cricut for holiday times!  I can’t wait to post some more of my projects for the holidays to share with you.  If you are interested in learning more about SCAL, be sure to check out the links here or  in the sidebar for their website. I hope you liked the card, and thanks for looking!

PS…I challenge you to do a web search for any holiday image in your mind you may want to cut and search for “svg cut file [name of your image]“.  See what will be available to you immediately to cut!