Christmas Sentiment Tree Card

Here's a great Christmas card to make.
It's great because:

• It required a limited amount of supplies, especially if you already have stuff to do embossing.
• All the supplies came from local craft stores at 40-50% off.
• Each card does not take hours to complete. There are a lot of great cards out there but most are too labor intensive to be practical if you have a lot of relatives and friends you need to send cards too.
• Most importantly, it looks nice.

Since this is the first Christmas card post of the season, I'm going to try to do a giveaway. Post a comment on the link below on the original blog post by Nov 14, 12:00AM EST. For every 25 people that comment, I'll giveaway a pack of 4 of these cards to a random winner until I run out so spread the word!

Enter here: http://sharedcards.blogspot.com
The blog feeds out many ways to multiple sites. Feel free to comment on any of them, but if you want to participate in the giveaway you must comment on the main blog post above.

Copic Marker Are Cheap If You Use Them Regularly

As I keep coloring certain types of images, and going back to certain colors again and again, I am starting to appreciate the value of my Copic markers. Unlike most markers that you toss when they get too dry to color consistently, you keep your Copic markers and just refill them. You might have to shop online to get the refills.

As you start noticing you are using a color a lot, you should start to think about getting a refill for it and planning ahead. Copics are popular and are imported from Japan so it can takes weeks to get a refill if it's not in stock. I have several on backorder myself that I will have to wait 4-8 weeks to get.

For some of my colors, I have used up about 5cc of the refill bottle already. With another system, I would be on my third or fourth marker in that color by now. A Sketch marker holds a total of 3 ml of ink, so a 25 ml bottle is good for 8-10 refills. A Caio marker holds 2 ml of ink, so a refill bottle is good for about 13 refills if you have the Caio line. The lighter blending colors are the ones I am tending to use up faster.

I prefer the Sketch markers, so one refill and one marker are equivalent to 9 to 11 markers for me. Considering I just got a bunch of refills on sale at $4.80 a piece and brought the markers on sale as well, that means each of the 11 "refilled markers" only cost me about a $1.00. So if you use them regularly, they aren't expensive at all.

Something to think about if you need to color on your Christmas cards.

2 More Halloween Cards

Here's two more Halloween cards that show one way you can make your own patterned and glittered paper. I made the stamped and glittered black card base several weeks ago but never finished them off with something on the front. I was cleaning up the craft table some this weekend and found these again and decided it was time to finish them before Halloween was over. I had wanted to find something really cool to do with these but decided to just play on the whole black/white theme but reverse the colors and then put glitter around the edges to help tie it to cardstock.


Click on the card image for directions, supplies or larger images.

Is Halloween Really Over?

Here's a tag I made this Halloween weekend inspired by techniques I learned last month at a class Wendy Vicchi taught at the Queen's Ink. You can't really see the shimmer in the online picture, but it does make a difference in person. Click on the card image if you want directions on how to make it.

Thanksgiving Cornucopia Card

Here's my latest creation for Thanksgiving - a Cornucopia stamped out and then colored with Copic markers and matted in fall colors for Thanksgiving. I tried another coloring technique initially but for something this you really need the colors to match up exactly to real life because everyone knows what fruits and vegatables look like. Copic markers were the easiest way to get a realistic color.

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Some blog viewers remove and/or reformat content, breaking it in the process. If this has happened to you, the original content is available at http://sharedcards.blogspot.com/.
For supplies and directions, click on the card image to go directly to that page on http://www.sharedcards.com/