My Christmas card, take one

I want to apologize for not updating for such a long time. I've been busy and haven't taken the time to write about my creations and I'm sorry.

Last year (2006), I sent out Christmas cards that I had made the year before to sell at a craft fair (not very many of them sold, so I had lots left). We built a house last year and moved in 2 weeks before Christmas, so there was no way I had time to make cards especially for that Christmas. Painting all the walls, grouting the tile, and just generally helping build the house took too much time. The year before (2005), I was so focused on making cards for the fore mentioned craft fair (that was held the middle of November), that I didn't have time to make cards and just sent store bought ones. This year I am determined to send handmade cards that were specifically made for my friends and family, not just ones I have sitting around extra (not that they care, but for some reason it makes a difference to me). I really wish I would have started before now, like in July, but life hasn't worked that way this year. So, around the middle of August, I was in Joanne's craft store picking up ribbon for another project (that I will blog about soon), and decided to pick up a Cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder. Then a few days later, a friend had a Stampin' Up party. Since I had spent so much money at Joanne's, I didn't have much left to spend at the party, but I did find a snowflake wheel that I thought would go with the folder and decided to pick it up. Here's my first attempt at blending the two. Not perfect yet, but it's a work in progress to find the exact one I will be making.

I finally had found the glue ink pad I've been looking for since the end of last year when I was at Joanne's in August. It basically works like a regular ink pad, but after stamping with it, you heat it with a heat gun and it becomes tacky, making the perfect surface to adhere Perfect Pearls, glitter, small beads, Pearl Ex powder, etc. I'm still getting the hang of it, but it basically works like the Stampin' Up Heat and Stick powder, but cuts out the extra step of stamping with ink and then adding the powder. You just stamp with the glue pad. I used it to ink the wheel (which is on the light blue paper) and I then added white Perfect Pearl to the images after heating it. I also rubbed the glue pad over the embossed design on the dark blue paper and then added the white Perfect Pearl powder to that too. I then added a small metal saying from Lasting Impressions for Paper that says "Happy Holidays". That is one of my least favorite parts, I think the metal should probably be either silver or nickel, but this is what I had. The two colors of blue didn't work as well together once the designs were added as I would have liked, and I don't think the images from the wheels pop enough yet.

A close up showing the metal phrase, the wheel image, and the perfect pearls added to the embossed image.

So, take two will change several things: If I use metal, it will be silver or nickel finish. I may just stamp a saying on a tag, find a ribbon with a saying that I like or something like that. I will find colors that work better together. I will experiment and try to make the images from the wheel pop a little better.

But all in all, a good start!