Annual Christmas cardmaking, part 1

Every year for the past two years, I have made my own Christmas cards.  This year is no different except I'm posting the cards I make as I make them and starting early.

The past two years I have started with purchasing the Christmas card kit from Close to My Heart in addition to making my own designs.  This year they are all my own.  Close to My Heart did make a card kit for this year but I just wasn't that happy with the look of it.  So this year I'm making all my own designs with some inspiration from Pinterest and Papertry Ink.

This week I came up with two designs using Papertrey Ink's stamp set: Tremendous Treats: Christmas stamp set, matching Papertrey Ink dies, and various Mat stack dies.

First is the Gingerbread man card.

"Sweetest Holiday" card

I had the perfect christmas paper to use as the background with the Gingerbread man stamp.  All of my cards are 4 by 5 1/2 inches unless I note otherwise. I cut the patterned paper down to 3 7/8 by 5 1/8, leaving a small board of white when placed on the card front.

Since the stamp is only an outline, I used the matching die to cut gingerbread men out of brown cardstock that closely matched the brown in the patterned paper.  Next I stamped the gingerbread man in Versamark watermark ink onto the cutout, sprinkled detail white embossing powder and shook off the excess.  To keep the little men from flying away (or burning my fingers), I used my tape runner to temporarily attach them to my cutting mat before using the heat gun.  Worked perfectly!

Close-up of die cut Gingerbread Man

With the white embossing on the brown cardstock, he looks just like a real cutout gingerbread cookie with white icing!  So cute!  As you can see in the images, I added the gingerbread man to a 2-inch circle edged with brown ink and added that to another die cut, the Mat Stack 5 by Papertrey Ink, cut out of monotone red polka dot paper.

I created a banner using green cardstock that matches the green buttons and the same brown cardstock that was used for the gingerbread man.  I used two different Martha Stewart Border punches to decorate one end of both pieces of cardstock and then layered them.

Next I wanted to add the sentiment "sweetest holiday wishes" that comes with the Tremendous Treats: Christmas stamp set.  I added the banner to the card and trimmed off the excess.

The second card I have made is my Red Bird card.  I used red and green plaid patterned paper for this one as I made this one with my mom in mind.  She loves nature, birds in particular, and plaid!

Red Bird card

Again I used the Tremendous Treats: Christmas stamp set.  I stamped the bird directly onto white cardstock and then colored the bird and hat with copic markers.  I used R27 & R29 for the bird and YG67 & G29 for the hat.

close-up of red bird

Using the Papertrey Ink Mat Stack 3 die, I cut out the shape from polka dot green paper.  Instead of putting the bird stamped paper on top of the green paper, I cut out a 2 inch circle from the green paper die cut and put the white paper behind it, trimming away any white paper that showed past the edges.  I also die cut a strip of deep red cardstock with one of the Papertrey Ink Half & Half dies and placed it down the center of the card.

To finish the card design, I added a white ribbon bow above the mat stack die cut and add another dies cut below it.  The third die I used was Labels 4 by Spellbinders which I thought closely mimicked the bracket edge on the Half & Half die.  I used the size from the die set that best fit the old Stampin Up stamp "Joy to the World" which I picked because it seemed to match the branch the bird sits on.  I finished the die cut with daubing CTMH Cranberry ink on the edges.

Check back to see the next designs I post!