Same Card But Updated

Last year I went completely overboard with my Christmas cards. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I must have originally been planning to send cards to an army. I made a ton of the same card. 75 of them went out in the mail to friends and relatives as intended, but that still left oodles of them in my craft room. To solve that problem, I thought I'd use them as trades at The Angel Company's Escape retreat in January. But I still came home with more than 50 of them. Were they multiplying in the dark or what?



The original card was made using Ranger's Cut n Dry Foam Pad. I put all of my snowflakes from the retired Snowflakes set on one large acrylic block and stamped it on the Cut n Dry Foam Pad. Then I added several colors of purple re-inkers. That custom pad lasted me for all of the cards I made! So that was the background. Then I used the snowman from the now retired Fun Filled Holidays set and colored him with Aquacolor Crayons and my water brush. The stars and his nose were colored with Prismacolor Pencils. Super simple! And away they went (except for the ones that stayed and bothered me because they seemed to have been wasted).

This year, with the craft show coming up, and the folks at the Art House offering to sell cards for me again, I needed to come up with a bunch of cards. So I looked at the old snowmen cards and tried to figure out how to update them into something different, but without adding too much additional work.

What I ended up doing, was cutting the front panel off all of the original cards, cutting them down by 1/4" on the top and bottom, and cutting the corners out with a corner punch. Then I added a few Crystal Stickles, and voi la! The same card but different. No waste, and I'm a happy girl.

Crafty Card Holder

What a weekend. Saturday I spent my day at the Shepard Craft show. Unfortunately, that was a bust. Not that I didn't expect it. In this economy, people are not necessarily purchasing the crafted items already made, they're wanting to make them themselves. I totally understand that. So, here's a little something that you can make yourself. It's a Christmas card holder. I want to say that I saw the concept on the Carol Duvall Show a few years ago, but I may be wrong.



I made mine with foam board, 4 pages of 12 x 12 scrpabook paper in two different patterns, adhesive, a ruler, a heated Exacto knife (using my Walnut Hollows Hot Marks Tool), but any box cutter or sharp straight blade will do, and 24 star-shaped brads.

First you want to cut two triangles from your foam board. The bottom edge will be 12 inches and the sides will be 13.5 inches.

Then you'll want to position and glue your paper onto them.

Once the adhesive is dry, you want to cut a 1/4"-wide slit from the top to approximately the 1/3rd point one one piece, and from the bottom to approximately 2/3rds up on the second. If you were to hold these up next to each other, the slits should meet.



Next, you want to make small cuts every 2 inches where the cards will go. These should alternate on each piece so that the cards don't bump into each other. For example, on one of the pieces, you want to start your slits 1 inch from the top, and make them every 2 inches, and on the other, you want to start 2 inches from the top and make them every 2 inches.



Now you're ready to assemble the tree. Simply line up each of the slits so that the tree becomes dimensional.




The final touch is to add the star brads between each of the card slits.



Now you're ready for the cards.