Remembering Christmas with a leaf

I normally have a fair few Christmas cards made by this time of year but this year... well, suffice to say I'm beginning to feel that it's time to roll my sleeves up and get on with some! Luckily there are the 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown and Rudolph Day challenges to help me get my act together! Come and see what I've made:

 'Christmas Tree' is the theme from 52CCT and having had great fun turning the leaf from Wonderfall into a tree yesterday, I thought I'd try one of the leaves from Gently Falling into a Christmas tree! I stamped the background trees into a masked-off area and then fussy cut a separate one for the foreground. I think it works! What do you think?

I absolutely love this decorative scroll from the Merry Little Christmas set for a bit of subtle decoration. Here I stamped a bit of it on the oval mat and used my stamp-a-majig to line up the rest of the image on the card base itself. You can see the fussy cut leaf as a tree in this photo (although you might have to put your right ear on your shoulder to do so - free stretching exercises and everything on my blog today!) all dressed up with rhinestones and a bakers twine bow.

And this is the loveliest sentiment for all those folk you don't get to see very often. It's from Remember Christmas - a set I'll be show-casing a lot more of I can tell you!

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Gently Falling, Merry Little Christmas, Remembering Christmas
Ink: Cherry Cobbler, Always Artichoke, Garden Green classic inks, Whisper White craft ink
Card stock: Whisper White, Soft Sky
Other: Big Shot, Ovals framelits, Basic rhinestones, Cherry Cobbler bakers twine, Chalk marker, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night, but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help. You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

And as a special thank you for shopping with me, you'll get a free gift and a handmade card when you place your first online order with me during September.


I'm thinking of renting myself out as a weather guage for weddings and picnics because whenever I settle down to make a chilly-looking Christmas card we seem to get a heatwave! A cardigan came off with every layer I added to today's card until I was seriously thinking of getting the shorts out of storage!

See you tomorrow,

Get well soon Shelli!

It's Get well week at Crafting Clare's Paper Moments this week as I seem to have a fair few relatives and friends who are not 100%. Today's card though was made for Shelli Gardner, the CEO of Stampin' Up, who was recently involved in a serious riding accident (read about it on her blog here.) and is now recovering at home with her family. It may seem strange to send a card - after all, I don't actually know her! - but I would like to add my voice to the many that wish this inspiring woman a speedy recovery.

This beautiful creature from Horse Frontier was stamped and coloured with sponging, aquapainter and markers before pasting it to a card front. I used one of my oval framelits to cut an aperture in a panel of Soft Sky card stock and stamped it with the sentiment and a decorative tab.

Horse Frontier also contains a horse shoe image which makes a great charm! I stamped it in Baked Brown Sugar on Crumb Cake card stock and cut it out with my sharp paper snips. TIP: When you have a very curvy shape to cut out, use oval or circle punches to start you off and then trim the straighter bits with your snips. The charm was pierced, threaded with linen thread and tied round the aperture.

I also wanted to show you this little tab detail above the aperture. It's from a new Christmas set in the new seasonal catalogue called Merry Little Christmas and I know it's going to be a very hard-working addition to the Craft Square Metre!

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Horse Frontier,  Merry Little Christmas, Hopeful Thoughts (sentiment)
Ink: Basic Grey, Soft Sky, Smoky Slate, Island Indigo, Old Olive, Early Espresso, Baked Brown Sugar
Card stock: Whisper White, Soft Sky, scrap of Crumb Cake
Other: Ovals framelits, markers, linen thread, paper snips, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night, but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help. You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

And as a special thank you for shopping with me, you'll get a free gift and a handmade card when you place your first online order with me during September.

I am always touched at how lovely my readers are and I'd really like to thank everyone who has sent good wishes for my father and father in law. Just to update you, things have now stabilised for my father, and my father in law is now home from hospital with someone to come and help every day. I have the utmost respect for the medical profession but I think I really have had enough of hospitals for the time being!

See you tomorrow for more getting well,