Saturday, October 9, 2010

Charity Christmas Cards 2010 - Finale!

Here are the last of the Christmas Cards that were made to donate to the Southern Ontario Animal Rescue this year.  This batch is my own.  I decided to experiment with some techniques for these.  The first technique is glitter.  Now, I have used glitter before, both with a masking technique and with a direct application.  However, I had not built a whole scene before.  So, using the masking technique, I made a glitter scene of a Christmas tree on a snowy hill.  The entire scene is glitter, including the snow!


(Click photo for larger view)

For the one on the left, I used the direct application technique and placed my tree on a snow embossed background.

On the next handmade Christmas card, I continued with the snow embossed background.  This is a simple card - as simple as I could make it - and non-denominational.  I think it always helps to have a handful of those around!  I feel bad not sending a Christmas card to some friends only because they may not celebrate Christmas, so I always send a generic "seasonal" or "holiday" card instead.

Because these are so simple, I made several of this design.  I also had a good handful of the snowflake gold background paper, so I was able to make many for donation.  Once I felt I had a good pile of cards done, I decided to try something totally new: outline stickers.  Outline stickers mimic the look of embossed stamping.  Instead of stamping first and then heat embossing the outline, you can use an outline sticker.  The outline is raised, just like embossed ink, and then you colour inside.
I only made one outline sticker Christmas card.  The stickers are SO fussy!  They are easily bent out of shape.  They are transferred with transfer paper, but I found that trying to get them off the transfer paper to stick them to the card was bending them all out of shape.  I chose two facing shapes for this card and stamped the sentiment.  The blue in the background is actually a metallic but it came out much darker than I thought it would.  I'll have to use up the rest of the sticker sheet eventually, but when I do, I think I will use watercolour paper for the colouring next time.  (Maybe more practicing will change my mind about the outline stickers.)

The last pair of Christmas cards are the crowning jewels.  I bought this Santa stamp image from High Hopes Rubber Stamps specifically to make cards for SOAR.  Now, I'm not a very adept stamper, so I considered this exercise experimental too.  The image is just too cuddly cute!
The left Santa I coloured with zig markers.  These markers colour much darker than the right image, which I coloured with copic markets (which are alcohol based).  I sponged the copic image heavily and then decided it would be too dark on the already darker zig image, so I sponged that one lightly.  I love the brightness of the red and white background paper.  It reminded me of candycanes so it was perfect for this image.  The sentiment here was written with my die cut machine.

I hope you've enjoyed our Christmas Cards for Charity journey.  I will have to arrange to drop them off at SOAR in early November!

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