Arctic Stamper

Here are some Christmas cards I’ve made recently. I seem to like snowy things, blue and purple. Makes sense, I suppose.

It must have been one of my weak moments when I agreed on making 20 cocker Christmas cards for our (or more like our dogs’) breeder. I struggle with two of the same and now I was to make 20! Lucky for me, all 20 didn’t need to be the same so I came up with a ‘recipe’ and made all 20 cards with different patterned papers, fooling myself to think that all the cards were really different. It was all good fun once I got going. I even cracked a joke in Finnish which doesn’t happen too often. I love plays on words but am incapable of making any in Finnish. How weird is that? Anyhow, this time I managed one. ‘HAUskaa Joulua’ means ‘Happy Christmas’. The first three letters are in capitals because that’s what the dogs say in Finnish. They don’t go WOOF, they go HAU.

Here is a picture of what they look like. Click the image to see all 20. The cards are not as crooked as they look. They were just laid on the table not so flat.

Well, we are disappearing under a ton of snow. It has been snowing non-stop for ages and I have been putting off ploughing all day but might have to just get on with it tomorrow if I ever want to get out of here again. There is almost a knee-high layer of snow on the drive and garden. I might live in the countryside but hillbilly I’m not and therefore do not have a tractor so all the ploughing is done with just elbow grease. It’s a good thing that I have rye in my wrists, as the Finns put it

Since it’s so topical, I made a snowy card Don’t know why I don’t use vellum more often since I like the look and feel of it. The text on the card says ‘warm Christmas greetings’. I like using it with anything snowy.

For a long time I have wanted to try alcohol inks on holographic card. As it happens, I don’t have any holographic card so I ended up wrapping ordinary mat card with holographic sticker sheet. Alcohol inks worked just fine on it. Again, I wanted to emboss a white snowflake on the card. As I was reaching for the heat gun my brain funtions switched on and I realized that the holographic sticker sheet is actually plastic and would melt with the heat. Being no scaredy cat I went bravely ahead melting the embossing powder in very short bursts. It took forever but the powder melted and the holographic sheet didn’t. How cool is that?

Another Christmas card. I tried a new colour combo with alcohol inks: Pitch Black and Wild Plum. Cool. In fact, über-cool. I did it on pearlescent card so there is a slight shimmer too, which is also cool. Snowflake and ‘Merry Christmas’ are stamped and embossed in white and the whole thing is outlined with a stardust pen.

I just had to try paper moulding for the embellishment on this card. The snowflake has been made using toilet paper which has been wetted but not soaked and the snowflake stamp has then been pressed on it and the paper left to try. I also sprayed it with inks. The background on the card is from my alcohol ink background stash. I think it’s great being so messy and yet so 3-dimensional. It has so many layers because I wanted to get every last trop of ink left on the underlay. I also stamped snowflakes on the background with holographic embossing powder.

Here is a close-up of the holographic snowflakes. I love things which are only visible at certain angles.

Although it’s not particularly cold here in the Winter Wonderland at the moment we do have close to half a metre of snow, if not more. So these following cards seem quite appropriate. I stamped a large sheet full of snowflakes and then wiped the whole card with VersaMark ink and embossed it with holographic embossing powder. I then made three cards out of that big snowflake sheet. On the first one I also glued some clear beads on the snowflakes. I wonder if they are all going to fall off in the post. Hopefully not. ‘Hyvää Joulua’ means ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Joulutervehdys’ means ‘Christmas Greetings’.