A Holly Jolly Christmas

Here's a jolly little Christmas card. No challenges - just something I wanted to make. I'm working on a few personal goals this weekend - using some stamps I haven't used or haven't used in a long time, using some of my scraps and stuff in my stash and making simpler, smaller cards. This stamp is one of the very first stamps I ever bought and I used it to make my very first stamped card several years ago. I still think it's really cute. Since it's so small and has the hand-drawn look, I chose to color it with chalks instead of my usual Prismacolor Pencils. That's another one of my goals by the way - to use some of my other coloring media.

Supplies
Stamps: Jolly Ranchers, Merry Christmas 02 (Stampabilities)
Ink: Vintage Sepia (VersaFine); Vintage Photo and Fired Brick Distress Ink (Ranger)
Paper: Tan cardstock, green cardstock, DP - all scraps from my stash
Embellishments: Long rectangle Nestabilities, scallop border punch, ribbon, button
Techniques: Chalk, distressing
Finished Card Size: A2 (4 1/4" x 5 1/2")

Merry Go Round Swap: The Last Three

I am posting the last three of my cards for the Merry Go Round swap in one post since they are all done now (and I have other cards I want to post :). If you don't know what a Merry Go Round swap is, see my post from December 29th.

The image for this card came from my friend Lucy. I'm not sure of the manufacturer. If you knew Lucy, you would know that this is a perfect card for her. I colored the image with colored pencil, the papers are scraps from my scrap box and the sentiment is computer generated. I inked the edges of the image and the sentiment with Lime Chalk Ink. I just kept it simple to stay in keeping with the cartoon character of the image.

The image for this card was my least favorite one of the six I recieved in the swap, BUT this turned out to be my favorite card of the bunch when I had it finished. The image is colored with colored pencil. Papers and ribbon are from my scraps (surprise!). The sentiment is from Stampendous and was purchased from the "Hot Spot" at Archiver's for a buck (cha ching!).

This is the final card. I like the image (I have a thing for collage images:), but I didn't have and reall y great ideas for anything to do with it. The one good idea I did have, I didn't have enough space on the card to execute it properly. That's kind of a drawback to swapping - you have to make the cards A2 unless you want to provide envelopes. I colored the castle with pastels (chalks) and rolled on Distress Ink in Antique Linen. Once again, papers and ribbon are from my scraps. The spiral clip is from Spare Parts (Hobby Lobby).

Merry Go Round Swap #2: Paris

This is the 2nd card I made for the Merry Go Round Swap I am participating in. See yesterday’s post for a description of this type of swap. I see that the very right edge of the card was cut off in my scan. The red mat really does go all the way around.



I colored the lady’s dress with pastels (I call them chalk, but I have a friend whose son is an artist and he made it perfectly clear to me that chalks and pastels are two totally different mediums.) I then used a sponge roller (one of those mini paint rollers) to roll on some Tea Dye Distress Ink. All the papers and ribbon are scraps from my stash. I printed the sentiment on the computer, and then distressed it the same way I did the main image.

I’m not listing the supplies used because I don’t know who made the stamp and all the other supplies were scraps.