Hello, Friends! I’m soooo far behind on my Christmas preparations! I am trying to get a few last minute cards done before it’s too late! I pulled out my Crafty Secrets Creating with Vintage Christmas CD the other day and found the cutest little vintage image that I worked up into this pretty layered Vintage Happy Christmas Card.
I created lots of layers by tearing and overlapping sections of paper beneath my cute focal image. All the papers are printed from the Creating with Vintage Christmas CD. I used the brown music paper, Red and Green Music Paper, and the December Calendar from our free 2016 calendar download. I found a beautiful vintage poinsettia card on the CD, and I used that as a layer in the background, too. I fussy cut the poinsettias and layered them beneath my focal image, then added some pretty Petaloo blossoms and stick pins, die cut ornaments and a sparkly sheer iridescent red organza bow.
I hadn’t done a really distressed card in a long time, so I went to town with my distressing tool
I crumpled, crinkled, distressed and inked my papers, then used loads of foam adhesive to create dimension and depth.
It seems like I find something new to love every time I open up this amazing CD!
So, are you finished with all your Christmas cards yet? I think some of our friends and family are destined to receive New Year’s cards this year! LOL Or, better yet…maybe I’ll just get a head start on Valentine’s day!
Crafty Secrets December 2015 Linky Challenge and Blog Hop
Hello, Friends! Welcome to the Crafty Secrets December Linky Challenge and Blog Hop. I’ve prepared a sweet Christmas Joy pocket card & tutorial to share with you here today. You should be arriving here from the Crafty Secrets BLOG. We have an “anything goes” theme for this month’s challenge, so it’s a great time to create with your Crafty Secrets goodies and then link up on the Crafty Secrets Blog. One lucky winner will be randomly selected to win a $25 digital shopping spree in the online store. And everyone who plays along gets to use this month’s free downloadable paper and image. So let’s get this show on the road!
I am such a huge fan of our Creating with Vintage Christmas CD. I sat down one afternoon and just trolled through all the scrumptious vintage papers, images, tickets, tags and templates and printed out a nice stack of goodies to play with. It seems I find something new there every time I look. This time, I found this darling Christmas Joy greeting and decided to work it up into a pocket card. For my tutorial, I’ll be sharing with you how I created the star border with chipboard and will show you how I made the pocket as well.
As you can see here, the inside of the card opens up to reveal a pocket that I’ve stuffed with an ornament and some vintage buttons. You could easily tuck in a gift card or other small goodie, making this a card and gift in one. This sort of card is wonderful to send to friends or family who live far away.
The card itself is pretty enough to decorate a mantel or to add to a holiday display. The little ornament would be cute hanging on a door knob or in an office cubicle. I stitched it onto some denim with a layer of cardstock between to add some stability.
I tapped my chipboard pieces thoroughly with Versamark ink.
Next, I covered them with Stampendous Frantage Shabby Blue Embossing powder. This powder has chunky granules, as you can see in the photo along with flecks of gold and blue and blue glitter flakes. When you tap off the excess and heat emboss, they all melt together and leave a shiny enamel type finish. It’s a quick and easy way to alter chipboard.
I backed my open stars with antique gold paper scraps, but you could easily leave them open. To do this, I just traced around the outside edge of the chipboard, then cut the star shapes out on the inside of that line so that they would fit perfectly. Just glue them to the back side of your chippie and you are all set.
How to Build a Pocket
This is such a quick and easy way to add a pocket to a card, and you can adapt it to be whatever size you want, as the basic steps are the same no matter the size of the pocket.
Start with a 4.25″ 5.5″ rectangle of cardstock that matches your project.
Score in 1/4″ from both sides.
Rotate your paper 90 degrees and score a line 2 1/4″ from the right hand side.
Fold both sides in and burnish with a bone folder. Fold the short side UP and burnish with a bone folder.
Trim away the excess side flaps.
Punch a thumb hole on the short side with a circle punch.
Add white glue to the side flaps on the short side.
Fold up and seal. Voila! You have a pocket. You can decorate the front with designer paper and slip a slightly smaller piece of designer paper inside the pocket to finish. Told ya it was easy!
I embellished my card with one of the tickets from the CD. This was treated with Glossy Accents. Adding gold jingle bells, gold metallic string, Petaloo Botanica Flowers, painted baby pine cones, red beads, pine twine and a pretty bow tied with Sheer Iridescent Red Ribbon really gives this card a festive feel.
From here you will hop on over and visit the one and only Ginny Nemchak who no doubt has something totally fabby to inspire you in your crafty journey.
Don’t forget to link up your Crafty Secrets project to the BLOG before midnight on December 20th! I can’t wait to see what you make.
Bringing Home the Christmas Tree with Really Reasonable Ribbon and Crafty Secrets
Hello, Ribbon Lovers, and Happy Thanksgiving to you! I hope you are all enjoying a warm and happy day with your friends and family!
For lots of folks, today marks the day that the Christmas tree takes its place of honor in the home. When our kids were small, we used to visit a local Christmas tree farm the day after Thanksgiving and spend a few chilly but happy hours picking out just the right tree. Then it was home for hot chocolate and leftover Thanksgiving Pie. YUM!
This sweet vintage image from Crafty Secrets reminded me of those happy days, and I worked it up into a rustic Christmas card to share with you here.
Sometimes a card calls for fancy ribbon…and sometimes it calls for the rustic elegance of burlap string. For this simple bow treatment, I combined red burlap string, green burlap string and natural burlap string with gold jingle bells. I used one strand of each color and then “looped the loop” 5 times on my Zutter-Bow-it-All to get a nice, full string bow.
How about you? Have you put up your tree yet? I’m so glad that we took the time to enjoy a simple activity like bringing home the Christmas tree when our kids were small. It fills my heart and mind with happy memories even now!
Wishing you a heart that overflows with gratitude for the simple gifts in life…
Crafty Secrets November 2015 Linky Challenge and Blog Hop
Hello, Friends! Welcome to the Crafty Secrets November 2015 Linky Challenge and Blog Hop! You should be coming here from the Crafty Secrets BLOG. If so, you are right on track! If you’d like to visit every stop along the way, I have the list posted below. You don’t want to miss any of the wonderful inspiration from our design team. Our theme this month is “Visions of Sugarplums” and the design team was challenged to make anything BUT a card. What fun! With that in mind, I set about to create a Christmas Countdown Calendar, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ll share all the details below, but first, here’s the blog hop list for this month.
When I was a girl, I loved Advent calendars! There was something magical about counting down the days until Christmas. I rummaged around in the Closet of Shame until I found a cute little chalkboard easel and a tiny wooden box that were patiently waiting to be altered. These became the base for my Christmas Countdown Calendar.
The chalkboard measures about 6.5″ x 8.25″ and has an easel on the back as well as a little tray on the front. My sweet daughter-in-law found it for me at a local thrift store and scooped it up for me. I wanted to jazz up the red base just a little, so I painted it randomly with Picket Fence Distress Crackle Paint and set it aside to dry. As it dried, the paint developed little hairline cracks that look like a frosty windowpane. The chalkboard itself was spritzed with Dylusions White Linen Spray.
Once the paint was dry, I added some Vintage Christmas Plaid Ribbon around the edges of the frame, holding it in place with 1/2″ Scor-Tape. I twisted natural burlap string together to form a handy little “clothesline” for hanging my countdown tags and held it in place with two brass tacks on either side of the frame. You can’t see them here because I covered them up with a truckload of Petaloo flowers!
I started decorating the frame in the upper left hand corner, placing a very full double layer bow on the bottom. This was topped with a loopy string bow, tied with more natural burlap, a jeweled Petaloo flower and some holly leaves. I found this sparkly red tassel in my stash and added it into the mix. Then I began to layer on the flowers.
I just kept gluing them on until I was happy with the way they looked.
To decorate the tray portion of the chalkboard, I cut out the December tag from Crafty Secrets Seasonal Calendar Creative Scraps. The edges were inked with Vintage Photo Distress ink. The little sisal Christmas tree was plain green, so I painted it with more of the Picket Fence Distress Crackle and then sprinkled it with clear glitter and apple green glitter while the paint was still wet. The tree, red and green tinsel and jingle bells were glued into place with a hot glue gun.
It’s a little bit hard to see in this photo, but I cut a glittery white plastic snowflake in half and glued each half behind the easel frame. Next, chipboard letters were painted with Picket Fence Crackle Paint and set aside to dry. I added some rhinestones while the paint was still wet. When the letter were dry, they were tapped with Hickory Smoke Distress stain. This completed the decorating of the frame. Now for the countdown tags!
I love this little box! Found at a yard sale, it was a sad little box, with a very bad stain job. So I painted it red, then rubbed it with Picket Fence Distress Paint, HIckory Smoke Distress Stain and filled it to overflowing with Christmas Countdown tags. The front was decorated with fussy cut images from our Merry Christmas Creative Scraps, some white tinsel and red berries.
I kept the top simple, just adding a natural burlap string bow, some berries and a painted flower.
Inside the cover, I used a piece of paper from our gorgeous Vintage Christmas Papers. The Santa Collage is gorgeous, and so perfect for this project.
I wanted to make the box so that the tags would be easy to keep together and quick to find. How fun to pull a new tag of the box each day and then hang it on the line!
I cut 24 tags from red, green and black cardstock using the die from Heartfelt Creations Luggage and Tags die set. They were just the right size to fit in the box. Images are from the following sources:
Each tag also has a die cut number for each day of the month leading up to Christmas.
Christmas Eve Day gets a fancy gold punched medallion.
And Christmas Day gets a super sized tag with red glitter paper and gold foil.
This was not a hard project to make, but it did take a lot of time. Still, how fun to pull this out every year and countdown the days til Christmas! I definitely think it is worth the effort.
From here, you will hop on over to visit the always inspiring Ginny Nemchak to see what she cooked up for our Visions of Sugarplums extravaganza! Once you’ve visited all the blogs, be sure to pick up this month’s free digital paper and image from the Crafty Secrets blog. Then link your project up to the Crafty Secrets blog, where one lucky winner will receive a $25 digital shopping spree and have their blog featured on our Facebook page and Heartwarming Vintage Blog.
If you’d like to purchase this Christmas Countdown Calendar, it’s available in my ETSY shop.
Hello, Friends! Happy Friday! Was this a long week or what? Having the house on the market is like having another full time job. Dale was kidding me the other day, saying that if I didn’t back off a little on all the vacuuming, I’d wear the carpet out! In between all the cleaning, I’ve been sneaking in some studio time. This week I got out my Crafty Secrets scraps, and put together a quick pink and black girlfriend card.
I was organizing my desk for a showing, and had these papers left over from the Forget Housework card that I shared with you a while ago. Instead of cramming them into
“The Drawer of Forgetfulness” (aka the scrap bin) I sat down and put together this very girly pink and black card.
It really didn’t take more than about 30 minutes, as I had already trimmed out a lot of the pieces for other projects and then decided not to use them.
I created lots of layers by tearing and overlapping sections of paper beneath my cute focal image. All the papers are printed from the Creating with Vintage Christmas CD. I used the brown music paper, Red and Green Music Paper, and the December Calendar from our free 2016 calendar download. I found a beautiful vintage poinsettia card on the CD, and I used that as a layer in the background, too. I fussy cut the poinsettias and layered them beneath my focal image, then added some pretty Petaloo blossoms and stick pins, die cut ornaments and a sparkly sheer iridescent red organza bow.
I hadn’t done a really distressed card in a long time, so I went to town with my distressing tool
I crumpled, crinkled, distressed and inked my papers, then used loads of foam adhesive to create dimension and depth.
The inside of the card uses a sentiment stamp from the Vintage Santa Digital Art Stamp Set. I added a cute image from the Vintage Christmas Booklet and more Vintage Christmas paper from the CD to finish off the card.
It seems like I find something new to love every time I open up this amazing CD!
