Christmas Card Ideas... FAST CARDS!

MODERN STYLE

This is the last in my series of posts about getting all your Christmas cards done quickly. I had a small group of ladies round and they each made twenty cards - five each of these four designs. As it happened, this class took a bit longer than the three hours I had given it, but still all the ladies completed all twenty cards and have a big stack ready to give out or send away.
Here are the cards, cutting patterns and brief directions follow:

Card 1: Noel

White Daisy Base (6x3”), Ruby panel (5¾ x 2¾”), White Daisy Squares (1x1”)

Dry emboss the ruby panel with a texture. Stamp the letters for “NOEL” on the four squares and daub with black ink. Create the bow and hold together with a white brad. Adhere ruby panel to card front and attach black strip to bottom third of card. Adhere squares and black bow on top.

Card 2: Polar Bears

White Daisy card base (5½ x 4¼”), White Daisy panel (5 x 3¾”)

Use a roll of washi tape to create an outer frame around the outside of the white daisy card base. On the white daisy panel, create the mountain scene by ripping a piece of scrap paper in half diagonally. Spritz the panel with only the bottom third hidden, then cover the bottom two thirds and spritz again. Stamp polar bears and sentiment in black. Stamp snowflakes in slate. Colour jersey and scarf, and attack panel to card.

 

Card 3: Santa's Sleigh
White Daisy Card base (5½ x 4¼”)
Mask bottom and sides of card with painters masking tape (comes away easily). Stamp trees in first, second and third generation black. On a scoreboard or using a scoring blade, score all around the card front ⅝” from the edge. Stamp Santa image. Add ruby washi tape around the outside edges. Create sentiment on a die cut white daisy piece and attach with foam tape.

 

 

Card 4: Scooter

White Daisy Card Base (5½ x 4¼”), White Daisy panel (5¼ x 4”)
Stamp scooter in black on white daisy panel. Also stamp onto scrap pieces of ruby cardstock. Cut only “body” from ruby and adhere ontop of card. Stamp presents in ruby on pannier. Stamp tree in green on scrap white card and cut out. Adhere ontop of seat. Add ruby shimmer trim to base (cut a curve for the back wheel) and sentiment in ruby. Add a doodled line around the outside. Sponge ruby ink around the card base before adhering panel to card front.

Christmas Card Ideas... FAST Cards!

Traditional Theme

These are four cards we recently completed for a fast cards class with a traditional Christmas theme. We completed 20 cards in three hours.
The dimensions for each follow:

Card 1 (Tree)
6x4 White Daisy Card Base, 6x4 Black panel, 2x3.5" White Daisy panel
Stamp tree on white cardstock panel, at the very bottom. Stamp Merry Christmas sentiment on scrap white paper and cut out. Adhere black base to white card front. Position tree in the centre of black and adhere. Cut silver shimmer trim in half and position around the outside of the white panel. Cut corners tidily or mitre. Adhere sentiment at top of the tree with foam tape.

Card 2 (Joy)

Colonial White Base (5½ x 4¼”), Yuletide Panel (5¼ x 4”), Kraft Panel (1¾ x 4¼”)
Stamp "Joy" onto Kraft panel, on the far left. Dovetail the right end with sharp scissors and daub the whole shape. Adhere the Yuletide and Kraft panels to the card base. Create the Cricut bow (Artiste cartridge). I cut it at 1" tall, and used liquid glass to create. I also made sure that I curved the ends with my bone folder, rather than creased them. Adhere to card.

Card 3 (Noel)

Colonial White Base (5½ x 4¼”), New England Ivy Panel (4 x 1¾"), Kraft panel (4 x 1¾"), Yuletide Panel (4 x 1¾"), Colonial white panel (2¾ x 1¼”).

Stamp New England Ivy piece with "Noel" in New England Ivy ink. Emboss Kraft piece with dots folder. Stamp holly embellishment onto Colonial white piece with Bamboo ink, then stamp sentiment over the top with New England Ivy. Daub around the edges of the Colonial White piece with New England Ivy ink. Adhere all items to card, daubing first if desired.



Card 4 (Wreath)
Colonial White Base (4x4"), New England Ivy Square (3¾ x 3¾"), Colonial White square (2¾ x 2¾").
Dry emboss New England Ivy square with dots. Stamp wreath on Colonial White square in desert sand ink, then stamp pinecones over the top in Cocoa. Corner round piece and daub with Desert Sand Ink. Stamp Sentiment onto scrap Colonial White and cut out with good scissors. Adhere layers to the card, raising sentiment up on foam squares.

I used three stamp sets when planning this class, all currently available. Please go to my website to purchase, or contact me directly.

Noel (C1598) $25

Always Grateful (C1559) $25

Merry, Merry (C1591) $25

Christmas Card Ideas... FAST Cards!

Religious Theme

Here are four cards we recently created at a speed card class - we completed 20 cards each in three hours.
Dimensions for each follow.

Card 1 (Angel)

White Daisy Base (5½ x 4¼”), Glacier Panel (5¼x4”), White Daisy Panel (4¾ x 3½”)
Stamp lower third of glacier panel with glacier ink and a background stamp. Adhere to card. Stick strips of ruby shimmer trim to the edges. Stamp angel in glacier on the white panel, in the left upper corner. Stamp the sentiment in slate directly onto the panel. Stamp again with ruby ink on scrap white daisy cardstock. Trim and adhere the wording you would like in ruby. Adhere white panel to card.

Card 2 (Wise men)

White Daisy Base (5½ x 4¼”), Outdoor Denim Panel (5¼x4”), White Daisy Panel (5¼ x 2”)
Emboss Outdoor Denim layer. Spritz white daisy panel and stamp Wise Men with Outdoor Denim ink. Daub edges of white daisy with outdoor denim ink. Adhere White cardstock to embossed Outdoor Denim cardstock. Wrap ribbon along the base and adhere in place with three glue dots. Adhere this layer on the base. Stamp sentiment on Cricut die cut with Outdoor Denim ink, and star with Slate. Daub edges with Outdoor Denim. Adhere to card with foam tape.

Card 3 (Stable)

Colonial White Card Base (5½x4¼”), Colonial White panel (5¼x4”)
Create background with bamboo ink on Colonial White panel. Stamp stable, figures and sentiment with Desert Sand ink. Daub edges with Desert Sand ink. Adhere to card base.

Card 4 (Shepherd and Bethlehem)

White Daisy Card Base (3x6”)
Create sky by building up a deep blue background with Pacifica ink and the rounded part of a sponge. Keep the top darker and the bottom lighter. Create space for star by adding circles of increasing size at the upper left corner. Stamp Bethlehem, Star and Shepherd in black ink. You can use second (and third) generation stamping for the town to make it look busier.

 For this class, I used two stamp sets. The Hostess stamp set "Sing Glory" which is quite beautiful, and the "Glory to God" set which is unfortunately now no longer available. However, we do now have a replacement set which is just as stunning, "Reason for the Season", featured below.

 Reason for the Season - $33. D1614

Sing Glory - Hostess only $10. C1587

Why you shouldn't ask for "likes" on Facebook

Along with many other Close to My Heart Consultants, I run a Facebook page for my business. It's really handy for keeping in touch with my customers to post news about current specials and upcoming events that I'm running. This post is aimed at my fellow consultants... and actually anyone who runs a Facebook page for their business.

Lots of likes is bad (sort of)
This might sound strange but having a lot of likes on Facebook is actually not necessarily good for your business. It all comes down to the reason why they liked your page in the first place. The only thing it gets you is kudos. What I mean is that if someone goes to your Facebook page and sees 700 likes, they might think, "Ooo, 700 likes, that's cool, this must be someone worth following." This is a good thing.

Other than that, the return for lots of likes is minimal, but as I said, the key is in how you got them.

When we first start up a Facebook page, we want lots of people to follow it, and most of us send out invitations to our friends and family, both near and far. Because they are our friends and family, and want to support us, they "like" our page.
The problem here is that whenever we send out news, photos, updates etc, it's only sent to a small proportion of our followers. And if a vast majority of these are friends and family hwo aren't actually interested in coming to our events and hearing about our specials, it does us little good. We're not actually getting the word out to who we want to reach.

If I have twenty followers who are all interested in coming to workshops and hearing about my news, Facebook will randomly select a percentage of these to receive my updates. (It may be as low as 10%, I couldn't find a definitive answer.) So that means maybe two of my followers hear about my events.
If I have twenty followers and sixteen of those are friends who live on the other side of the world or family who are keen to support my home business, it takes the likelihood of me getting my message out to those four remaining interested customers way down. Chances are that the two Facebook select to send out my messages to will not be those who are actively interested in my page.
If you upscale the numbers, the sinking feeling remains the same. With 100 followers, I might be lucky for my messages to be seen on 10-15 of their newsfeeds.

So how can I use my page?
I can't control who follows my page. I love finding that I have new followers. It's wonderful when someone new discovers my page and chooses to receive news from it because they're interested in what I post.
But I need to make sure that a high percentage of my followers are actually interested in the news I send out - whether it's for their own pages, their projects, or coming to my classes, etc. A like for like sake is worthless to me.
I invite ladies who I have met at gatherings to join my page.
I am also trying to more consistently send out status updates - that way, as Facebook cycles through my likers randomly, I hope that they continue to reach those who I want to reach.

Here are some really interesting articles:
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-declining-organic-reach

And here is a video that tells you why you should NEVER choose to advertise on Facebook in order to gain more likes. It's based on the same theory as I've mentioned above.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=748822798463228&pnref=story

Happy Facebooking, All!

Jo

Easel card and drawer

Hi Girls

I couldn't find the best way to do this so I'm uploading the directions as a png and I hope that you can all get them!
I met some really lovely ladies this weekend - it's been a stunning three days! I have so much to catch up on, but I know that this will be on your minds, as it is on mine.
I will make a video of my Christmas book (and the waterfall sleeve) when the lighting is good tomorrow, so please do check back here on my blog later in the week, and I will also paste a link to it on my business Facebook page.

So these directions are for the cute wee easel boxes you all saw me with on Friday night. Thank you for your very positive comments - it's very humbling to have such lovely remarks from such talented ladies.
You saw me with three - one was a gift box (no photo sorry - many of you know why!!) one a desk calendar and one was the box for the Christmas tags with our Stamp of the Month.

Thanks so much for seeking me out! And remember... Cute is IMPORTANT!

 

October Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Australasian Blog Hop for October's Stamp of the Month
This is one stamp set you won't want to miss out on! Only available in October, Home for the Holidays costs $33, or only $5 when you place an order worth $75 or more.
If you have arrived here from Natalie's blog, Close to My heart With Natalie, rest assured that you are in the right place.

This very cool blog hop will give you heaps of ideas for how to use it creatively. After you've left a comment, just click on the link at the end of this post and you'll be taken to the next person's blog, and eventually you will arrive back when you started.
I made two little projects with the stamps. The little stack of presents was something I saw in one of our old CTMH catalogues and fell in love with. It's an image cut on the Cricut using the Art Philosophy cartridge. I cut the smallest box out of Cranberry cardstock (overstamped with Cranberry ink), the second from Yuletide paper, and the third from Kraft cardstock (overstamped with Topiary ink).
Inside the boxes are the wee tags cut from the Art Philosophy cartridge which co-ordinate with our Stamp of the Month. For the tag colours I used Topiary and Cranberry inks.

 For my second project I created some 3x4" cards from Glacier cardstock. The faces are decorated with Snowhaven papers and then I stamped the tags with Glacier, Cranberry and Slate. I adhered them to the front of the cards with foam tape to pop them up. I enjoyed using the Ruby Chevron ribbon to add a bit of festive cheer - a quick knot looks like a Christmassy bow. The box is created from the Artiste cartridge and Glacier cardstock, and held closed with a Velcro dot. I also made some matching envelopes using Snowhaven papers.

Great news! The ruby chevron ribbon - which is such a fantastic addition to your Christmas projects - is on special this month! Every purchase of $75 gets you a FREE roll of ribbon - either Ruby or Outdoor Denim.

Before you head off to your next blog - which is Shaunna's Passionate About Pages - won't you please leave a comment? Thank you for stopping by!

September's Stamp of the Month

Welcome to the Australasian Blog Hop for September's Stamp of the Month - your one-stop shop for inspiration! If you have arrived here from Lauren's Blog, you are in the right place.

September's Stamp of the Month is a delightful set of seven called "Family is Forever". The heart corresponds with a cut on the Artiste Cartridge, but this can just as easily be fussy cut. I can see many uses for this stamp set - from gifts to décor and scrapbook pages to cards. I am looking forward to seeing what my CTMH sisters come up with this month.

This stamp set is worth $33, and can only be purchased in September. However, when you place an order of $75 or more with me this month you will be able to add the SOTM to your order for only $5.

I have been playing with this easel drawer box design for a while, and have chosen the paper from the Wanderful range to go with it. What a versatile paper packet! The colours in my project are Crystal Blue, Bamboo, Kraft and Colonial White. I used a charm from the Storyteller charm set and a piece of Baker's Twine to finish it off.

The box unopened.

The easel sitting up. It is anchored by a heart stamped from the SOTM set raised up on foam squares.

The drawer pulled out. You can put anything you like in it - sweet treats would be especially appropriate to go with the sentiment! I put some Twinings fruit tea bags and Avon Lip Balm.

 

Cutting guide below:

You need three pieces of cardstock.

1. 4" x 12" (this is the easel)

2. 4" x 11.5" (this is the sleeve)

3. 6x6" (this is the drawer)

I scored, folded and daubed each edge before adhering with strong glue. I used Liquid Glass for a lot of this project so that I could be sure of it staying together.

 

 

Please leave a comment before visiting your next blog, which is Vandra's CTMH Virtual Craftroom.

Stop by again soon!