Getting started on Christmas

Every year I say I will make a couple of Christmas cards every month, every year I forget after January, and panic sets in around the 18th December when I've got less than a dozen usually from my magazine commissions to send out! This year I am going to be better and starting in September is not too late right????

So here are my first 2 - very simple but super cute - just using a couple of dies per card.

I started with some old striped paper that I had in two shades of blue and I cut a circle from each (stacked on top so they were in the same place) so I could swap the backgrounds out for each character. The circle I picked was just big enough to fit inside the first die I used - the Merry Christmas Circle from Gummiapan. This die cuts a solid circle with Merry Christmas repeated 3 times around the border - so you can use it as is, but I wanted a bright red foil paper for that and didn't want that behind my characters so used the die to cut out the middle of the sentiment circle (you could just stick the patterned paper circle in the middle without that extra step too)

Then for the first card I went with the adorable Happy Snowman die - I totally fell for this character as soon as I saw it - such joy in the upturned carrot nose and those open arms! I cut him once from white card, and once from white glitter card - coloured the nose and arms on the white and snipped them off to stick on top of the glitter layer. I also cut a scrap of black foam to get the buttons nice and chunky so they looked like lumps of coal. Glued in to the middle of the sentiment and bang - card 1 done!

For the second card we repeat the process - this time I just cut Rudolph from white card and coloured him with markers. I added a red enamel dot for his nose and I used a bit of metallic red nail varnish on that to make it as shiny as the red foil card (you could just cut a circle of red foil card instead) but once you stick him in the centre, then that's card 2 done too!