I'm so super excited

Well guys this is the first of our Gift MAL (Make A-long). In an attempt to 1. get myself moving on my Christmas and other giftie makes, 2. get some inspiration and 3. hopefully give others inspiration, I have set up this Make A Long. There is a tab at the top of this page which has links to the other blogs involved, so make sure you visit them and see what they are up to as well.

I decided I would make a start on some of my Christmas cards - that's not a gift I hear you say. However a lot of time and effort can go into a card that looks just right, sometimes more than actually goes into some gift. Therefore my cards are usually just as important a feature. Getting the colours just right, getting the layout perfect, making backgrounds, putting it together just to realise something doesn't quite fit. Cards can be extremely individual as they are all put together by the person who made them rather than following a particular recipe.

Here he is all finished:

This Santa is from a set of Joanna Sheen's Giordano set of unmounted stamps called Our Family. The website can be found HERE. He was stamped on a cream piece of card in a sepia coloured ink. I decided not to colour him as I liked the rustic look of just the brown ink.

Next I made a background to mat this guy on, after much testing and dismissing of other backing papers. This was done using a gloss card and applying Adirondack inks, colours: Current, Latte, Ginger and Pearl as well as some blending solution using a blending tool to do so. I simply applied the colours to the tool and dabbed them all over the piece of card.

I then used Spellbinders, Shapeabilities dies - Parisian Accent- (also available at Joanna Sheen), with a golden brown card stock and cut two corners and a border. I layered the Santa image onto the inked background and put the two corners on the top and bottom right.

I put a piece of distressed script paper off centre on a 5" square cream card using double sided tape.

I then mounted my Santa topper to the right side of the card using double sided foam sticky pads and put the Shapeabilities border down the left of the card.

Here again is the finished result:

I love him. I think his little puppy and the birds around him are just so cute. I really hope you all enjoyed this first Gift MAL. I can't wait to see some of the others ideas. Any suggestions or comments are very welcome and if you wish to join in just visit the top tab for instructions.


Have a great day :)