Happy new year and Christmas 2016

Hi Crafters,  

better late than never I’d like to wish you all the best for the new year. Hope you all had a good start.  

As you may have noticed, I have been posting very rarely in the past months. That is mostly due to quite some health problems within the family, that took a lot of my energy.

Also, I fear, that this will not be solved quickly, so I apologize in advance for not posting very regularly. Though I will try.

I didn’t even manage to create the Christmas cards I had planned for this year. I mostly used cards I had left over from last year. Which isn't all that bad, because after all I didn't created them, to collect dust. 

As I do every year, I promised myself not to let next Christmas be as stressful as the last, so I decided start creating NOW, while I am still in the mood. And as I had bought the supplies already, I used them.

So, here they are, officially the first cards for Christmas 2016. 

 

  

 

 

 

This Teddy was actually coloured by one of my daughters.
She graciously allowed my to use it for our Christmas cards. Thanks Love!

 The idea to stamp and colour on wood is from Jennifer McGuire. Thanks Jen, you’re always such an inspiration! 

I stamped the images with Archival ink and them with my Inktense Pencils. I did all the shading dry and wet the wood afterwards to activate the colour (except where I used white). In some places I applied a second layer after it had dried again.

Then I drilled a whole in the wood and added the twine, so the recipients can hang it as an ornament.  

The whole panel is adhered to the dry embossed, very simple card front with a glue dot and the string with a second glue dot in the back.

As you can see, I didn't use a sentiment, I just wanted to focus on the ornament. That is also the reason, why I kept the card base very plain. 

As I couldn't use a standard envelope for this, I created simple boxes with my envelope punch board from red cardstock. Then I heat embossed the trees and ornament to tie in trees on the embossed card base.

 I created three similar cards the same way for my close family (so they will obviously get different cards), but I failed to take pictures, so I can't show these. Sorry.
And as I ordered the wrong size wood chips on the internet, I also created tags the same way. I thought, I could show you most of these, because we celebrated at my place and all the gift wrapping was left here, but it seems my family liked the wooden tags and kept most of them. So I can show you only a few of them…  

Hope you all have a great year
Hugs
Ela