Early for Christmas, Late for a Birthday!

I love making Christmas cards so much that sometimes I get distracted and miss a friend's birthday.  So today I've got my latest Christmas card, and a belated birthday card to share.

The Christmas card is for the Mixed Media challenge "Blue".  I had to take part in that challenge as those of you who know me well, will know that I passionately love blue!

I was playing with my Inka Golds and made a few sheets of background by putting small blobs of different colours of Inka Gold (in this case blue and silver) onto my craft sheet, spritzing with water, and pressing my cardstock into it.  In some spots it comes out thick, in others thin so there is some nice texture to the card.  Here's a close-up showing the texture:

I then stamped some random bits of text on the piece (with some of the ink wiped off of the stamp before stamping).  Because it did not dry flat, I used a trick I saw Bonnie use recently where she made a frame to put around a piece to keep it flatter.

Out of slightly glittered cs, I die cut some small snowflakes and the "winter wishes", making three layers of each and sticking them together for dimension.  I lost the little die cut dot for over the "i" in "winter" so substituted a little embellishment.

Now on to the belated birthday card:

I missed a friend's birthday and so had to make a belated card for her.  I wanted to take part in the Tag You're It Challenge as I really liked their inspiration tag with a flower, some script, a border, and a blue background.

And I wanted to CASE this gorgeous card I saw on SCS.  I love Maura's poppies against the blue stencilled background.  My blue is lighter, almost aqua blue, and I used a different stencil and poppy die, and of course my focal image is a tag.

The background is Tumbled Glass ink sponged through a stencil, then a bit of script stamp in grey.  The poppies are die cut twice - the stems on one set sponged green, and the flowers cut off the other set, sponged with two shade of orange, and then stuck on top of the other die cut. 

I then die cut using a tag die, and die cut a tag the next larger tag die, and sponged the edges of it with the Tumbled Glass to match the colour.  Added a grey ribbon and a grey sentiment.

Thanks for taking a look!

Supplies:

Christmas card:

Stamps: Inkadinkado text stamp

Paper: white and silver glitter cs

Paper Size: A2

Ink: Ranger Archival black

Accessories: blue and silver Inka Gold, L'il Inker stiched rectangle die, Cheery Lynn snowflakes die, Penny Black winter wishes die

Birthday card:

Stamps: Old Island Stamp Co. script, Rubber Stamp Farm sentiment

Paper: PTI white cs

Paper Size: A2

Ink: Vivid Cobblestone; Distress Tumbled Glass, Bundled Sage, Wild Honey, and Spiced Marmalade

Accessories: grey ribbon, dimensionals, Memory Box Poppy die and Texture stencil, Die-namics tag dies