'Tis the season!

Ohhh I hate to say it....but I will anyway! It's pretty much less than 11 weeks until Christmas and if you've popped into the shops lately you'll find more Christmas than Halloween stock available to part your hard earned buck-a-roo's with!

We have the same argument every year, its too early, its too soon, there should be a law against putting Christmas stock out this early! The reality is, some people like to get festive earlier than others and some people enjoy being organised before un-organised people like myself complete the mad dash around the hectic shops three days before Christmas carrying un-human loads of presents! This.year.will.be.different! Why you ask? Well....ahem I've finished my Masters.....and I got myself one of those First Class Honours thingy-ma-jiggys, so straight away there's less stress off my back and more time to plan the right presents and of course, even better, lush Christmas stock, most of which will be on sale in the Limerick Craft & Design Shop which is opening soon!

To kick off the festive season, I've a simple yet pretty card tutorial for you. The paper I've used is from the Bo Bunny collection. Its packed with Christmas earthy tones and there is a tonne of additional embellishments and die cuts you can also buy to accompany the paper if your heart desires them! Let the Christmas crafty-ness begin!

01

Select your card size. For this card I'm using a card measuring 13.5cm by 13.5cm. I nearly always use the blank card templates, they're convenient and save you the hassle of measuring and cutting out card from scratch. Select a red piece of card and cut to 13.5cm by 13.5cm and adhere to your card. Your background is now complete and you're on your way.

02

Select a piece of paper with a festive pattern. I've chosen a piece with mostly green colours to set off the red background. I've chosen to cover most of the card, but have left a strip of about 0.5cm around the card which I'll use later. Cut the paper to the size of 13cm by 13cm and ahere using 3D sticky tabs. Love these tabs, they always made my cards pop out!

03

Select an alternative piece of paper with a different, but complimentary pattern. Use a border tool of your choice to punch out a pattern and adhere the piece to the card using 3D sticky tabs. Already your card is starting to take shape.

04

Select some twine, available from most craft shops or online and tie twice around the card making a bow on the right hand side.

05

Select some die cuts. For this card, I've selected three pieces in total and arranged them around the left hand side of the card and adhered them with more 3D sticky tabs.

06

Last, but not least, use a high quality white gel pen to sketch out some faux stitches all around the remaining red border and hey presto, you're done! Write your Christmas message, pop in an envelope and make someone happy!

Hey presto, a simple, but oh.so.festive handmade card for family, friends or someone special! Now that I've heaps more crafty time on my hands, I'll be sharing lots more crafty tutorials for you all to enjoy! Enjoy the rest of this rainy weekend!

Day 3 - Christmas Card-athon Series 2011

Today's card introduces you to the wonderful world of embossing. I have in my craft room all the tools necessary for embossing but rarely use them, however they do add a really cool dimension to cards so I should probably dig them out more often!.

To start, I have used a plain, cream blank card from a pack of 50. As mentioned before these can be purchased in any good craft shop. I'm sticking with the Christmas colours of red and green and using a few 'unusual' materials to spice it up.

With this card, I have decided to cover the front side of the card in bright green card stock and cut the stock to fit the front of the card and then simply glued it down with glue. I then used a ruler to create "not so straight" lines with a white gel pen along the edge of the card.

I then selected a cream piece of paper with a snowflake design and cut it about 2cm smaller than the actual size of the card. I used 3D glue dots on the back of the cream card to adhere the piece to the front of the card, giving it a 3D feel. I love 3D glue dots and always ensure I'm never without them!

Place the card to one side for now and select some paper which you would like to use for embossing for sentiment. In this instance I have used a clear paper which is almost like grease-proof paper. I had it lying around the craft room and find it really interesting to use. In order to explain embossing, I've created a simple video below which should be of use to you.

Embossing made simple:
1 - Select your paper for Embossing
2 - Select your sentiment and ink (Ensure the ink you use is suitable for Embossing)
3 - Cover your stamp with your chosen ink
4 - Stamp your paper with your sentiment - remembering to apply equal pressure to the entire stamp
5 - Select your Embossing power, and lightly sprinkle over the wet stamp.
6 - Shake off excess Embossing power
7 - Use your heat gun on the stamped area and evenly distribute the heat of the gun across the sentiment.
8 - When you see a shine appear and the stamp "rise up", you're done!

Embossing is a really fun technique, but be careful not to burn your fingers as the heat gun is very hot! At the end of the post, I'll list below all the materials / tools you need if you're interesting in learning the embossing technique and exploring it further.

Once the embossing is complete, you should cut the strip of paper used to the size required and adhere it to the cream paper. To add something extra I have added faux stitches in white gel pen to the sentiment piece. You're now half-way there!

Next, I'm using one of my new favourite materials... doilies!! Yes, they're very "little old lady", but trust me they're the coolest thing and best of all, they're cheap! You can find them in your local euro shop or on Etsy.

For this card, I have cut the doilies to size and placed it half way down the card and just behind the sentiment. Feeling that the card was still a little bare at this stage, I cut a huge amount of red baker twine and carefully wrapped it three times around the card and tied it in a neat bow. Cut off any excess twine with scissors.

To complete, punch some festive snowflakes from some green and red pattern paper and place around the card and you're done!

See you tomorrow for Day 4!

I'll be showing you how to make a Christmas card for someone special!

Embossing Tools
- Heat Gun
- Embossing Power
- Ink suitable for embossing!

Day 2 - Christmas Card-athon Series 2011

For today's card I'm showing you how you can easily incorporate ribbon into any card. I did mention that I love embellishments, so over the course of the 25 day card-athon series you'll see lots of embellishments being used along the way!

Similar to yesterday, this is a very easy card to make. The only tricky bit is the tying of the ribbon and the stamping of the sentiment....in all honesty, even that's not to difficult! Tying the ribbon is like tying a shoe lace!

To start, select some red card stock (A4 in size) and fold in half. Cut straight down the fold and you're left with two pieces of equal length. Take one of those pieces and fold in half, now you have your blank card.

I've used the same paper range as shown to you yesterday and if you havn't already run out to buy it, a link can be found here.

Select some pieces of the card stock that you like and cut two strips about 3cm each in width. Attach them to the left hand side of the front of the card and then select your ribbon. When cutting ribbon, a good rule of thumb that I adhere to is to cut the ribbon about 2.5 times the length of the card, that way you'll have enough to tie the bow.

When adding the ribbon, cut with a craft knife, a small hole at the top so that the ribbon can easily slide through, thus allowing you to pull the ribbon through the card and tie it on the front. 

To finish, tie like a neat show lace and when done, cut off any excess ribbon with scissors. The ribbon I've used in this card was purchased in America last year so unfortunately I can't provide any links to the exact ribbon used, but I will recommend some places at the end of the tutorial.

Now to the fun part...embellishments! I used my snowflake punch once more to punch a few snowflakes from some scrap pieces and carefully decided were to put them before adhering to the card. To add some more depth, I've placed some tiny white pearls around the snowflakes, adding another dimension. To top it off, no luckyrainbow card is complete without white gel pen faux stitches.

To complete the card, I have used my corner punch tool (available from all good craft shops) to corner one edge of the card. Sometimes its fun / different just to corner edge one side like I've done with this card.

To finish I've stamped a "Merry Christmas" sentiment with black ink. This stamp was purchased from America on Etsy. I really find the best tools, stamps and papers are in America and when I visited NYC last December I brought home a suitcase full of  Christmas stock ready to use to this year! I'm anything if not prepared.

So there you go....one joyful and very red Christmas card to send to someone special!

Tomorrow, I'll be showing you an embossing technique on an alternative type of paper! A little more trickier but a useful technique nonetheless!

Ribbon Suppliers as promised:

Cara Craft Supplies

Cork Art Supplies

See you tomorrow for Day 3!

Christmas Card-athon 2011

Tommorrow I'll be launching the 2011 Christmas Card-athon series! Over 25 days, I will upload a new handmade Christmas card and share with you a few pointers about how you can make your own and hopefully inspire you to get out there and make a few for your nearest and dearest!

Considering it's huge blogging task, I've already gotten started and have the first ten ready to go! A girl is gotta be prepared!

The best bit...at the end of the 25 days, I'll give a luckyrainbow follwer the chance to win a selection of the cards, call it an early Christmas gift! I'm looking forward to the event and I hope you all get something from it! Feel free to share with others!

Happy Crafting & I'll see you all again tomorrow!