Lights A' Chrimbo

Another card from my recent craft evening out.

While I was making up the card kits to take with me to the crop, I found this image I had previously coloured and filed away. I store my finished, coloured images in small, black  vinyl photo albums from the dollar store. I have a couple for Christmas images, and several of the same for non Christmas themes. Once coloured up, I move them to a another set of albums...brightly coloured albums to signify those images are already coloured.

They are so handy as I can just grab one of the uncoloured image books and my pens, if I am invited to an impromptu craft outing.

I coloured a couple images of this little snowman quite some time ago. The others have long since been made into cards...thought it was time he had a home too! lol I really like him with his lights all akimbo!

I managed to use some red velvet/suede paper for the image mat. It was VOS (very old stuff), many, many years old.. I have always loved the feel and the look of it. I found that it embossed the edge of the die into the texture of the velvet, quite nicely. I have not seen this paper in any of my local shops lately, so I cut every last scrap of it. Teensy pieces were even made up into corner dies. You will see these, and a few of the leftover scraps of it on my future Christmas cards.

I used snippets of the same papers on my last card. These were originally 12x12 scrapbook pages I used for a December Daily. I have a lot of snippets of them and realized the patterns are small enough to use for cards.

The red poinsettias were from a 25 cent clearance bin at Michael's. I always check those type of bins when they clear out things as I have found some great bargains there in the past. I know they are quite flat looking but this is another of the cards that will be mailed overseas so I could not use my poinsettia die to make a pretty layered one...they have too much depth to fit the standard postage slot.
Here is a close of of the leafy clusters.

For the top right corner, I layered some green card stock snippets of Sizzix branch with leaves dies with some kraft card stock Martha Stewart leafy branch punches. I was careful when I glued them to place the branches so they fit in between the leaves, rather than glued on top of them. This helps reduce the depth under the rhinestone of the poinsettia. The bottom left corner is the basically the same but I used a bit bigger green leafy branch, the Stampin Up Little Leaf Sizzlet die.
I am hoping that the rhinestone makes it through the slot but if not, I will pry it off and use stickles instead.

Thank goodness there is one lady at my local post office that is kind enough to test my cards for me and hand them back if I need to make adjustments to the depth!!! Sweet lady!

After I got my sentiment placed, I thought the card looked unbalanced at the bottom right. I needed something fairly small and found this wee 3D tag sticker in my Xmas embellies iris case. I placed it just above the sentiment and it seems to have done the trick, as my eye is not drawn there anymore.

Recipe - All items used are from my stashe
Card base and envelope -  Michael's textured square cards
Design Paper - red and green striped, Making Memories Twinkle
Design Paper - Red and white polkadots, snippets of 12x12 Making Memories Twinkle, Glitter Snowflake strip "B side"
Design Paper - snippets of 12x12 Echo Park, Style Essentials, Green Damask
Design Paper - snippet of 8 1/2 x 11, Dark red velvet/suede paper (VOS)
Card stock - snippets of green and of white, and snippets of 2 types of kraft
Dies - Impression Obsession Snowflakes; Spellbinders Hexagon; Sizzix Leafy Branch, Stampin Up, little leaves sizzlet die
Punches - Stampin' Up Word Window and Modern Label
Bling - red diamonds

I am entering this card in the following challenges:

1. Pixies Crafty Workshop - must be snippets
2. CHNC Extra - must be Christmas
3. Card and Scrap - Make a Christmas Card
4. Christmas Cards All Year Round - Winter Wonderland
5. One Crazy Stamper - Christmas
6. Simon Says Stamps Wednesday Challenge - Anything goes
7. Sister Act - always anything goes
8. Marks Finest Papers Christmas Card Challenge - must be Christmas
9. The Artistic Stamper - Christmas