Christmas Card Club - Animals at Christmas

For this fortnight's Christmas Card Club theme,  Kate at I Love Socks and Cards blog  chose the theme of Animals at Christmas.

My arthritis has been flared up for the past few weeks and my hands have been too sore to colour.  At times like this, I find there are plenty of pre-coloured images to use for cardmaking. LOTV is one of my faves and this little Deer and Bunny forest scene card front seemed custom made for the theme!

The design papers are all from my 6x6 First Edition,  Christmas Wishes paper pad. I am fond of these pads as they are stuffed full of pages and it is always possible to find sets of pages that look good together. The border was made from a snippet of one of the pages and then layered onto some kraft paper.  I thought that helped to tie in the kraft striped DP I matted the image with. I should mention that I meant to tilt the green mat the opposite way from the stripey mat, but somehow forgot about that idea...

The small poinsettias were purchased last summer at my local paper crafts store garage sale. They were just in a baggie so I do not know who makes them...sorry.  The larger poinsettia cluster in the top left corner is just a jumble of various items that were lying about in my Christmas embellies drawer, topped off by another of the poinsettias. I also added some dark green foil holly leaves, and then wished that I had matted the images with a dark green mirri paper.  In the spirit of trying to make multiples this year,  I still have another image lying on my desk. I will try the mirri mats on that card!

I often forget to leave room for a sentiment and this card was no exception. Luckily, I found this already stamped off sentiment in that Christmas embellies drawer I mentioned earlier. It has been in there so long, I have forgotten the manufacturer.  I fussy cut it out so it would fit onto the image, and then matted with red card and re-fussy cut.

My card base is a 6x6 from our local store. I was disappointed in this purchase as the weight of the card is really light.  I decided to try to increase the weight by completely covering the inside with the same DP as I used on the front. That really helped as it now feels OK. When a card is light, it seems to bend so easily and seems flimsy to me.

Stamped the Stampendous, Warmest Greetings sentiment on a circle of white card that I matted with the same green I used on the front. It has a very fine dusting of what looks like snowflakes, even though you have to look carefully to see them. This is a VOS stamp...bought in 1998!!!

I think my envelope is a bit of a dud. I used a couple of VOS Studio G stamps from Michaels. The polymer images had fused to the acetate and so I inked the stamp while still on the acetate sheet and stamped the poinsettias with red chalk ink. They are not crisp as I was thrown off by the problems with the stamp fusing to the acetate.  I then inked the Reindeer with a brown chalk ink and it sadly appears to be barely there. Drat... should have used Momento brown...

If you would like to see what the other ladies made, their hyperlinks are on my right sideboard. If you wish to join in with making a fortnightly Christmas card to a set theme (chosen by the members), just drop me an email.