A question to ponder........

The other day I was reading a blog of a fellow card maker and she mentioned that a "friend" of hers had once sent her some money in an envelope after Christmas one year so she was able to afford to buy Christmas cards for the following year. I was surprised to learn that someone would consider doing that however it got me thinking - do my friends think the same way?

So, if you are a non crafter I would love for you to leave me a comment and tell me if you think it is "cheap" of someone to send you a handmade card?

I'm not easily offended so don't be afraid to comment.

If you are a crafting friend I would love to hear from you if you have experienced anything similar to the above experience.

Anyway..... back to my crafting endeavours.....

I have been working on some more Christmas cards for my stash and playing with a new (second-hand) stamp. I bought it thinking it was a background stamp as there was no stamped image with it and when I stamped it I quickly realised it was a full on Christmas stamp. I decided to do some layering with it and it worked nicely.

I did however come to realise that Stazon Timber Brown ink on Very Vanilla Stampin' up cardstock does not in fact stay on as well as I would like.The tinges of red on some of the image are actually where the ink has smudged into the cardstock as I was handling it for cutting. If I try this again I will certainly use a different cardstock and maybe add some colour to the surrounds.

Have you ever seen a design and gone out and bought materials to make that card design to only have them sit in your stash for years?

Well, that is what I did with the beaded card. I bought the beads about 4 years ago along with some narrow ribbon and each year I look at them and think about that card I was going to make with them. Surprise, surprise, I actually got off my butt and used them. Having made one, I have several more beads to use up and decided I was ridiculously stupid for deciding to do it in the first place as those beads are mighty difficult to thread on ribbon. Thank heavens the Lord blessed me with patience. Now I just have to wait until my patience is about again to do some more.

Earlier in the year whilst at Margaret River I sat and stitched some more Form A Line cards. It's only taken me a couple of months to finally finish them off with peel offs and beads etc. Love this bell design but it takes a while to stitch. The result is truly worth it.

 

To this one I added an old sticker of Santa in the centre and more peel offs to complete the border and greeting.

Now over to some scrapping from my Crop the other night.

This is Heather's challenge over at Home and Scrapped this month to use up some tags. She is on a stash busting month which I need several off to put a dent in my stash. These are some old papers from a couple of years ago with all the matching tags and chippie etc. The woodgrain tag is the only one I altered the rest are from the Colorbok kit I had.

Next Heather was on to using our ribbons. She gave us a sketch to play with and I have a heap of old American Crafts ribbons that I am yet to use up . I would never normally put these colours together but I played with the colours on the cow in the photos and it all worked well - or so I thought. The candy is a stamp set from The Stamps of Life - candy2share.

Heather was also cracking the whip on using up scraps of paper so offered another sketch that would give us layers of bits of paper. I found some stickers at the Craft Stand that just happened to be military ones that worked really well with the theme.

Last Friday night was the step by step - also by Heather and she had us using up more strips of paper and playing with paint to create a background. By fluke the paint continually splashed up the page and looked like splashes of water to match the water coming from the fountain in the photo.

My last share is a Mid week sketch from Heather's Scrappy Sketches - 16-12. It was Mitchell's page of him holding the big bird. I even used the funky flower that I made at the last Home and Scrapped Cybercrop.

Well that's it for tonight, have a good weekend and Happy Craftin'