Final Christmas Card Post for 2025!

I can't believe it's the end of 2025 already!  That was one fast year!

To finish off with a couple of Christmas cards.  The first is for Inkspirational "Cold" and Addicted to CAS "Christmas".

I've been making some backgrounds lately using the cling wrap technique (see this SCS tutorial). For this one I used Magical Powders (shimmery powdered dye based pigments) sprinkled and spritzed with water on black mixed media cs with cling wrap scrunched up on it to create my background. Love the sparkle and the texture I got.

I topped it with a die cut village and a sentiment and added the panel to a slimline card base.  That sky looks very cold and icy to me, and having the houses and landscape all in white makes them look like they are covered in snow!

For 52 Christmas Card Throwdown "Use a Previous 2025 Technique", I chose the one from May "Use Die Cuts or Punches" and got out my old Martha Stewart pine branch punch and some square dies.  It's also going to the Snippets challenge as it used up lots of bits of green cs and dp for the wreath, a scrap of dp for the background, and scraps of green and red cs for the bordering layers. 

I made a thin circle out of scrap green cs using two circle dies, then punched many little pine branches out of scraps of dp (mostly pieces that had images of grass or leaves on them).  I glued them onto the die cut circle, added it to the background square of dp, and bordered with squares of red and green cs.  Finished with a small stamped sentiment and red gemstones for berries.  It's not the quickest card to make but I love the results.

     

Supplies for card 1:
Stamps - Penny Black sentiment
Ink - Versafine Onyx Black
Paper - white and black cs
Size - 7x3.75"
Accessories - aqua Magicals, village die cut

Supplies for card 1:
Stamps - SSS sentiment
Ink - Memento Rhubarb Stalk
Paper - scraps of various dp; chalk, red, and green cs
Size - 4.75" square
Accessories - Martha Stewart pine branch punch, Spellbinders circle and square dies, red gems

Ornaments for Peace on Earth

Time for another Peace on Earth challenge.  See the new mood board below.  I was inspired by the bottom left photo.

Quite a CAS card - the pine branch is cut from green shimmer cs, the ornaments from cream and yellow gold shimmer cs.  I used green cord to hang the ornaments from the pine branch, and an old SU punch set for the stamped sentiment.

Here's our mood board if you want to be inspired by it (but if not, we welcome any Christmas cards).  There's lots more inspiration from the rest of the Design Team over at Peace on Earth.

Supplies:
Stamps - Rubber Soul sentiment
Ink - Distress Mowed Lawn
Paper - white cs, cream, yellow gold, and green shimmer cs
Size - A2
Accessories - Memory Box ornaments and pine branch dies, SU sentiment label punches, green cord

A Star in a Window

The Peace on Earth challenge always inspires me with its mood boards.  This time I was inspired by the top right image (see the mood board at the end of this post).

I created the star using the Encrusted Jewels technique.  I die cut the star from thin chipboard, then placed it on a warm grill on top of a layer of non-stick craft mat then parchment paper.  I sprinkled it with gold embossing powders.  Once they had melted, I added chunky gold glitter and tiny star glitter on top.  The melted embossing powders holds the glitter in place.  To finish it off, I melted UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) on top. 

I die cut the window three times - twice out of scrap cs and once out of light grey cs and glued them together.  I die cut the pine branch out of a piece of smooshed green background that I had in my box (and again out of scrap and glued them together).  I put everything together, with a bit of gold cord to hang the star from the branch and a sentiment on a banner.
  
Here's the mood board:

We'd love to have you join us, whether you're inspired by the mood board or choose to make an "anything Christmas" card.  That's lots more inspiration from the rest of the Peace on Earth Design Team.

Supplies:
Stamps - unknown sentiment
Ink - Versafine Onyx Black
Paper - white and light grey cs, lightweight chipboard
Size - A2
Accessories - small Spellbinders star die, TH branch die, Memory Box window die, gold embossing powder, UTEE, chunky gold glitter, tiny gold stars

Embossed Pine with Star and a Partially Gilded Butterfly

I made this card for the Jingle Belles challenge "Emboss-able" - embossed texture or heat embossing.  I've got both:

I made a dry embossed background with a 3D folder and also made a heat embossed star using the "encrusted jewels" technique.  I die cut the star from thin chipboard, then placed it on a warm grill on top of a layer of non-stick craft mat then parchment paper.  I sprinkled it with gold embossing powders.  Once they had melted, I added chunky gold glitter and tiny star glitter on top.  The melted embossing powders holds the glitter in place.  To finish it off, I melted UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) on top.

I die cut the pine branch out of a piece of smooshed green background that I had in my box (and again out of scrap and glued them together).  Then glued the branch on the dry embossed panel and hung the star from it with gold cord.  Finished off with a sentiment die cut with a banner die.

For Sweet Stampin' "Things with Wings", I made this:

I stamped the butterfly in my MISTI with Frayed Burlap ink. Then applied FlitterGlu to the stamp, only getting it on parts of the stamp, and restamped it. Pressed gilding flakes onto the butterfly and rubbed off the excess. I like the way it's only partially gilded and looks a bit rustic.

Added the sentiment and a die cut pierced frame.

 

Supplies for card 1:
Ink - various green Distress inks
Paper - white cs, thin chipboard
Size - A2
Accessories - TH 3D embossing folder, IO pine branch die, Spellbinder star die, gold embossing powder, UTEE, gold glitter and tiny stars, banner die, gold cord

Supplies for card 2:
Stamps - Penny Black butterfly, Savvy Stamps sentiment
Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black, Distress Frayed Burlap
Paper - white and dark grey cs
Size - A2
Accessories - FlitterGlu, gilding flakes, pierced rectangle frame die

Happy Spring and Another Christmas Card

It's time to make a few spring cards even though I have to keep up with creating my Christmas stash, so today I've got one of each.  First up for Tic Tac Toe's line that says "pastel colours, flowers, spring theme" and the Four Seasons Challenge "anything spring":

The dogwood is British Columbia's provincial flower so we have a lot of dogwood trees and it's quite glorious in the spring when they're all blooming.  Not yet though as we're having colder than normal temperatures and all our spring flowers are delayed.

The image is watercoloured with a bit of pink splattering on the background and then added to a dry embossed background.

My second card is for Color Throwdown "green, cream, and brown".

A simple stamped and watercoloured image, die cut with an oval, bordered with a green deckle oval, and a green pine border die cut for the bottom of the card.  I used cream cs for the card base and there's cream in the breasts of the birds, and brown for the pine cones.

Challenges:

Tic Tac Toe (I used the centre vertical line)

Four Seasons "Spring"

Color Throwdown "Green Cream Brown"

Supplies for card 1:
Stamps - Technique Junkies dogwood, Stampendous sentiment
Ink - Versafine Onyx Black
Paper - watercolour paper, cream cs
Size - A2
Accessories - watercolour paints, Sizzix embossing folder

Supplies for card 2:
Stamps - Serendipity chickadees, Make an Impression sentiment
Ink - Versafine Onyx Black
Paper - watercolour paper, green and cream cs
Size - A2
Accessories - watercolour paints, Memory Box pine border, Spellbinders oval and deckle oval dies

Blue Bells for Christmas

My goodness, the weeks roll around quickly!  Time for a new Peace on Earth challenge - anything goes as long as it's Christmas but you can choose to be inspired by the mood board.  I chose the bottom right image (see the mood board below) and made this card:

No stamping on this card - just lots of die cutting.  The branch and sentiment are cut from green shimmer cs, the stitched die cut panel and card base are white shimmer cs, and the bells are blue glitter cs.  I also cut the bells from a scrap of white cs and glued them together to give the bells more substance.  They are hung from the branch with gold cord and popped up a bit with dimensional tape.

Here's the Peace on Earth mood board:

I'm also entering it in the Snippets challenge as I used scraps of shimmer and glitter cs for the die cutting.

Supplies:
Paper - white and green shimmer cs, blue glitter cs
Size - A2
Accessories - Lil Inker bells and stitched rectangle dies, Impression Obsession pine branch die, Essentials by Ellen sentiment dies, foam tape, gold cord

Pine with Pinecone

Time for the latest challenge from Peace on Earth.  I was inspired by one of the images on their new mood board for this card:

I put the pine branch in my MISTI, randomly dabbed various mini Distress inks over the branches and stem to get some colour variation, spritzed lightly with water, and stamped on watercolour paper.  I did the same with the pinecone stamp.  Added a sentiment, bordered with brown cs, splattered some light ink, and used a Quickie glue pen and glitter on the white areas of the pine cone and in some of the angles of the branch (it's quite subtle and doesn't show up in the photo).

Peace on Earth is an "anything Christmas goes" challenge but if you want to be inspired by our mood board, here it is:

There's lots of other inspiration from the rest of the Design Team over at Peace on Earth.

Supplies:
Stamps - SU Ornamental Pine, unknown sentiment
Ink - Distress minis (Forest Moss, Pine Needles, Evergreen Bough, Gathered Twigs, Frayed Burlap)
Paper - watercolour paper, brown cs, PTI Vintage Cream cs
Size - A2
Accessories - glitter

Dry Embossed Pine Branch

I've got a Christmas card today for a couple of challenges.  Just Us Girls wants to see "Embossing Folders" and the ABC Christmas Challenge has "E for Embossing".

I really like Jennifer McGuire's technique with embossing folders.  See this video for details.

I embossed bright green foil cs with the TH pine branch embossing folder, then sanded the raised part, exposing the white cs underneath the green foil layer.

I stamped and heat embossed my sentiment on vellum and wrapped the strip around the foil panel, then mounted on a white card base. I added a little silver bow to the top of the branch.

Just Us Girls

ABC Christmas Challenge  "E for Embossing"

Supplies:
Stamps - SU sentiment
Ink - Versafine Clair Nocturne
Paper - white cs, vellum, green foil cs
Size - A2
Accessories - TH embossing folder, clear embossing powder, silver ribbon

Blue and Green Sparkle

The Paper Players want to see "Sparkle" and I have a lot of scraps of glitter cs leftover from Christmas card making.  So I made a sparkly winter card.

I die cut all the pieces twice - once out of the glitter cs, once out of scrap cs - glued them together to give them more substance and arranged them on a dry embossed background.  The bird has a bit of foam tape under him to pop him up above the pine branch.

The Paper Players "Sparkle"

The Four Seasons Challenge "Anything Winter"

Supplies:
Paper - blue and green glitter cs, white cs
Size - A2
Accessories - Memory Box bird die, Penny Black sentiment die, Impression Obsession pine branch die, snowflake embossing folder

Alcohol Ink Ornaments

I seem to be very last minute for lots of things in my life these days!  Here I am sneaking in under the wire for the Jingle Belles challenge "Holiday Ornaments".

I created the ornaments by dropping various blue and green alcohol inks on Yupo and spritzing with rubbing alcohol.  I then die cut the ornaments from it.  For more substance (because Yupo is quite thin), I also die cut them from scrap white cs and stacked them together.  I used a scrap of silver shimmer cs to cut the fancy ornament trim for the largest ornament.

I die cut a pine branch from green shimmer cs, added the ornaments to it using silver twine, and then stamped a sentiment in a co-ordinating colour.  In hindsight, I wish I'd either pushed the sentiment to the right or used a more square (rather than long) sentiment.  But I am happy with the ornaments.

Jingle Belles "Holiday Ornaments"

Supplies:
Stamps - Stampabilities sentiment
Ink - Versafine Ocean Depth chalk ink
Paper - Yupo, white cs, green shimmer cs
Size - A2
Accessories - Spellbinders and Memory Box ornament dies, Impression Obsession pine branch die, blue and green alcohol inks

Glitter and Shimmer

Glitter!  The theme for this month's CAS Christmas Challenge:

Loll is our host this month and she lists all the various types of glitter we can use.  For today's card, I went with glitter cardstock - I have rather a lot of it in my stash so it was good to pull it out.  Not that this card used much of it!

I find for die cutting I need to use the lighter weight glitter cs.  I have some very heavy stuff that just won't die cut nicely.  The blue and green came from Joann's (a craft store in the US), the white is SU's Dazzling Diamonds cs, and the gold is Tim Holtz's adhesive backed glitter paper.

I die cut all my pieces, glued the ornament together, punched a tiny hole in the top to thread some gold cord through, die cut another of the base ornament out of fun foam to give it dimension, and attached to ornament to the die cut pine bough.  Then glued all the pieces to the top layer of white shimmer cs and finally popped that layer up on the white shimmer card base.

It was a far more fiddly card to make that I'd originally anticipated!  And a real pain to photograph and get the glitter to sparkle!

Here's a close-up that hopefully shows the glitter better:

Please join us at CAS Christmas and make our gallery sparkle with glitter!  There's lots of ideas from the Design Team and our fabulous Guest Designer, Michelle (of Seashell Creations).

I'm also linking up my card over at The 12 Months of Christmas challenge "Sparkle, Glitter, and Bling".

Supplies:

Paper - PTI white shimmer cs; blue, green, gold, and white glitter cs

Size - 5.25" square

Accessories - Memory Box ornament dies, TH pine branch and noel dies, fun foam, gold cord

Wreath on a Brick Wall

Time to remind you to get your CAS Christmas Challenge "Wreath" cards made!

I went with one of my all-time favourite wreath techniques.  I make a few of these every year as they always sell well at my Christmas card sale!

I used the Martha Stewart Pine Branch punch to punch out all the branches for the wreath - I love this technique so much that I actually bought myself a second punch in case the first one I bought many years ago decides to pack it in!  Crazy, eh?

For the little branches, I used a variety of green decorative / patterned papers.  They are usually photos of grass or leaves that people would use for scrapbooking.  If you want to see what I mean, look at this example and this one on the scrapbook.com website.  I pick them up when patterned paper is on sale at Michaels or JoAnns.  Using them gives me nice colour variation in the branches and makes it look more realistic and even as if some of it is speckled with snow.

I cut a very thin circle base using two sizes of Spellbinders circle dies and then glued down the punched branches, overlapping each one.

For this card, I decided to leave the wreath with just a red bow.  Sometimes I add red or white gemstones for berries.  But I like the CAS look of it this one without embellishment.

The background is a Tim Holtz brick stencil and Ranger Texture Paste just covering an area slightly bigger than the wreath.  It left me with a perfect little spot to stamp my sentiment.  I trimmed the panel and popped it up on fun foam.

Here's a close-up to see the paste embossed bricks and the patterning and colour variation in the little branches:

We'd love to have you join us at CAS Christmas.  Your card needs to be clean and simple, and must follow the theme.  You have until September 24th to link up.  There's lots of inspiration from my fellow Design Team members and our wonderful Guest Designer, Birgit (Rapport fran ett skrivbord).

Supplies:

Stamps - PTI sentiment

Ink - SU Real Red

Paper - white cs, various patterned papers

Size - A2

Accessories - Martha Stewart pine branch punch, Spellbinders circle dies, Tim Holtz Bricked stencil, Ranger Texture Paste, red ribbon, fun foam

Greenery

A Christmas card for The 12 Months of Christmas Link Up, with optional theme of "greenery":

I put the stamp in my MISTI and inked up with various Memento Dew Drops, and then watercoloured the image.  When finished, I inked up the stamp with Versamark and stamped over it again, then carefully added regular clear embossing powder to most of it, but a sparkly embossing powder to the ribbon.

I did a very pale blue wash around the image and added a heat embossed sentiment, then mounted it on a brown card base.  I added red gems to the berries.

Supplies:

Stamps - Penny Black greenery, Paper Smooshes sentiment

Ink - various Memento Dew Drop inks, Versamark, Memento Rich Cocoa

Paper - watercolour paper, brown cs

Size - A2

Accessories - clear and sparkly embossing powder, watercolour paints, red gems

Birds with Glittered Santa Hats

Mid-month already so time to remind you to enter CAS Mix Up before November 24th!

Glitter and Christmas cards go hand-in-hand for me so I've gone with another Christmas card:

I stamped the birds on watercolour paper and painted everything except their hats with Gansai Tambi paints.  Then I fussy cut them.

I took another piece of watercolour paper and used Loll's Splash Watercolour technique (see video here) with two colours of Distress inks.  When dry, I die cut the pine branch and glued it to a piece of linen cs.  I stamped the sentiment and then trimmed it.  I popped it up on fun foam on the matching cardbase.

I put double sided tape on the birds' feet and foam tape on their hats and heads, and stuck them down.  I went over the main part of the hats first with my Quickie glue pen and added red glitter.  Then went over the brims and pompoms with Dazzling Diamonds glitter.

I scribbled a bit of glue randomly on the pine branch and added some more Dazzling Diamonds.

Glitter is so hard to photograph so here's a close-up:

 

CAS Mix Up is so much fun!  Just be sure to keep the card clean and simple, include some stamping, some glitter, and at least one other option from the list on the challenge site.  My other options are watercolouring, fussy cutting, splash watercolour, and die cutting.

Supplies:

Stamps - Penny Black birds, Make an Impression sentiment

Ink - Archival Jet Black, Distress Evergreen Bough, Distress Iced Spruce

Paper - white linen cs, watercolour paper

Size - A2

Accessories - Impression Obsession pine branch die, Gansai Tambi watercolour paints, Glitter Ritz red glitter, SU Dazzling Diamonds glitter, Quickie glue pen, foam tape, fun foam