Christmas in October...

The crew at Heart2Heart Challenges is helping you get a jump-start on your holiday preparations. 

My take on a Pear & Partridge WOTG card

This marks the second week that the Design Team has been asked to create a Christmas project. I had intended to start designing gift tags (one of my favorite things to do {see some of my December 2011 posts}, but I am in PEI, Canada this weekend (Oct 12th-14th) to run a half marathon, so this post had to be written before I left.  

Earlier this fall, I ordered the "Pear & Partridge" Christmas-card workshop-on-the-go (Idea book, page 62). Enough supplies and embellishments to make five each of three card designs. I got everything cut out, and made one of each card, then got bored... Don't get me wrong, the CTMH designs are great, and the instructions to cut everything out at once, batch-style, save lots of time and calculating. But the featured cards didn't even use all the stamps on the enclosed stamp set; I started to get ideas. I was also inspired by fellow CTMH consultant, Alyson Mayo, who posted a whole set of variations on the CTMH website. Here's a look at some of her cards:

Alyson Mayo's card designs

 I'm posting a couple of my "takes" on the original designs. So the paper elements and layouts are the same but the stamping and embellishing are mine. I added some bulk cranberry ribbon, hemp, the wooden arbor shapes (LOVE these! you can colour them with your ink pads, stamp on them, layer them). On the first card, I used the stamps (branches and words) to create my background paper.  The snowflake stamp is included in the Pear&Partridge WOTG scrapbooking kit.

On this card, I used a new (non-CTMH) "toy," the stitched mats from Lil' Inker Designs. These are a set of nesting dies, starting with the largest, which embosses this simple stitched detail on an A2 (4.25"x5.5") card base.  A subtle but beautiful addition of texture. I'll have fun using these on my eventual Christmas gift tags. I also stamped and inked the edges of the wooden shape.

So, wish me luck on the run (its supposed to rain!). Catch you on the next post,

Happy Crafting,

Caroline