A very crafty affair

The whole of December, as is for many crafters (although, alot of other crafters are more organised and have sorted by November), has been spent making Christmas cards. Since July, we have been making Christmas cards as samples in the shop, but by the end of November I decided I really must start with my own. T'was hard at first, all Christmassed out from doing shop samples, but then I was off. I've only just uploaded snaps of cards, gifts and the shop, and there are still more to upload. But thought I ought to add some piccies. After all, this is a craft blog! Hmm, New Year's resolution, do more regular blogging!I tried a bit of knitting on a card, my newly found skill :) Next stop a jumper! I love this stamp, so elegant - one of our main Christmas stamps in the shop this year. It looks good in so many colours, my favourite was Adirondack Cranberry (above).I used quite a bit of Blonde Moments Colour-Yourself Christmas paper, where these trees came from. I inked them with Mustard Seed and Peeled Paint Distress Ink Pads to get nice aged trees.

Starting to have a go at making my own backgrounds, and experiment with aging and distressing, plenty of ink and paint! Above, I used Cut'n'Dry foam and baby wipes to rub lots of different inks onto the card, the last being Fired Brick Distress ink. Then, I used the Hero Arts Giving Tree stamp over the top - not always re-inking the stamp, so that some of the trees fade into the background.

Did a few cards involving figure stamps - stamp the figure several times on different patterned paper, and cut out different parts, to get patterned dress, socks, etc.