Sunday 11 December 2016

Christmas is coming waaaay too fast!

I've been in panic mode this week as I had my first Christmas party and realised I didn't have any cards to take to it so I went into batch production mode into the early hours so I had something I could take with me.  Is it just me or is Christmas creeping up on everyone else too this year?  I feel so unprepared.

So I picked one design, and whilst I love it, it wasn't quick enough, so I did a second quicker one, both are heavily die cut based as I often find that quicker than stamping when you need to batch produce.

I started with the wonderful Woodland Basics die from Wplus9 and went for a kraft base to add to the rustic feel, using a stitched circle aperture and adding some beautiful soft snowflake paper behind it from the new  Winter Wonderland paper pad from Simple Stories.


I die cut a selection of the elements using the dies in muted Christmas colours and arranged them round the bottom of the circle, finishing with a simple sentiment from the Mama Elephant's Retro Holiday Labels

Whilst I adored the look of this card, I only managed to make 6 in just over an hour, so I decided that wasn't going to get me very far down the list of 50 or so I needed to make this week, so I opted to make a quicker design using Reverse Confetti's Leafy Wreath die.


I stuck with kraft but this time embossed a stitched square die into the card base to frame my focal image in the centre.  I started by stamping another one of the Retro Labels sentiments in the centre of the card so I could use the wreath to frame it.  The die comes with lots of loose leaves and twigs so you can get a really realistic look from it, but I liked the simplicity (and speed!) of just using the main circular die.   I die cut it once from dark green card and once from lime green and layered them up (covering the back with stick-it before cutting makes this even quicker "wink")   I die cut the berry clusters in 2 sizes and added them around before covering with glossy accents and adding a little ribbon bow at the bottom to finish.   You could speed this up even more by skipping the berry die cuts and using one of our new Nuvo drops to make the berries instead.






NEWS FROM THE STORE

The restock delivery from Mama Elephant we expected last week has been held up in customs.  I am working to get it cleared and here asap.  Hopefully early this week.
The Lil' Inker Designs new release will be live tomorrow in the USA and we already have our stock of it, so it will be live tomorrow here too!
We have the new release from Concord and 9th in transit, and hope that will be here this week too along with some restocks of perfectly penned ;-)
Lawn Fawn have a new mini-release with some Valentines themed products coming on the 15th December.   Our delivery is in transit, so customs willing we should have it in store when they do. 


This will be our last delivery of stock for this year but will be ordering new releases over the holidays so we'll have new stock coming when we re-open after Christmas :-)

2 comments:

  1. Two lovely cards, but the first is my favourite! I have those Woodland Basics dies and may try something similar myself. Thanks for the inspiration.

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  2. These are great ideas for batch making cards! Love the rustic look of the Kraft. I was doing the same thing last night (and this morning) as I still had 26 cards to make *groan* and I do agree that die cuts are the way to go! Fab inspiration, thanks :)

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The Seven Hills Crafts Design Team