Christmas Wishes - 10 cards from one kit, so far

These cards are from the Spellbinders' card kit of the month for November 2019, "Christmas Wishes".  I bought this kit on sale, but truth to be told I mainly got it for the die.  It's the only way to get them, and I've been wanting the little poinsettia die since I saw it last fall. The card above also used Spellbinders' scalloped circle dies and Gina Marie Designs' greenery sprigs dies.

Yes, this card features the dies from the set, the poinsettias that I had to have. The ornament dies are nice, too.

The above card is on a forest green background that has been embossed with a folder from Fun Stamper's Journey, of pine sprigs.

The "Merry Christmas" die is from Kat Scrappiness. The center bit of the "M" always sticks in the die and I've about a 50% chance of getting it out without ripping it or distorting it. Yay me.

This last card features a new frame die I got from Spellbinders, Candlewicking.  It's another tricky one that only works if  I pass it through the Big Shot multiple times in different configurations.  It does't show in the photograph, but there are circles embossed in the center of each little diamond shape. These require their own pass through the machine with the tan embossing mats. 

I have loads of products left in this kit so there will be more cards coming from it. 

Handing you a bunch of flowers

It's become my goal to use Spellbinders' Small Die of the month card kit die set before the next month's installation comes. I got in just under the wire with this one.  Both the hand and the flowers were fun to assemble. The name of this die set is "Handing You a Smile". 

One more for the swans!

Another card from the Spellbinder's card kit, "Golden Swan", which was the February 2019 kit of the month.

Spellbinders Kit of the Month for May 2019 -- two more!

There is just so much to work with in this kit that I went on and did two more! I was pleased to remember that I had copper "bugs" in my die cut cup on my desk, so those came out to be added. On the second card I used the birds, flowers, and flourishes from the older small die of the month kit called "Little Birdie".  On both cards, the sentiment came from the ephemera pack or the included journaling cards.

I used Nuvo drops in copper, vintage purple and Dream Drops in soft pink. 

2019 was the year of the card kits.

I'm going to call 2019 the year of the card kits, since I bought 8 of them. 2 of the kits I never even made 1 card from, not one!

The above kit, the limited edition kit for Simon Says Stamp Stamptember is one of them. I really can't say why I needed to have this kit. I really don't know why I did it.  I have used the Gina K glimmer gel from the kit, but that's all.

The Tonic Studios Christmas themed kit that I got during the summer is completely unused also.  Tonic Studios gets me with their embellishment "goops" and their specialty cotton papers.  The main feature of this kit is a die that creates a box frame. I'm probably never going to use that, but I had to have it just the same.

A couple of kits were well used, most recently Spellbinder's Merry Everything, and previously Simon Says Stamp's Bee Yourself.  I consider a kit well used if I make the "recommended" number of cards with it.  Most Youtube gurus do "10 cards, one kit" with the SSS kits, so that's my standard for SSS.  The Spellbinders kit came with 25 card bases and envelopes, so that's my standard for it.

A big lesson for me is to look at the sentiments included and REALLY think about where I would use them.  I'll always need birthday, sympathy and Christmas cards, but I have enough "love" cards to last me to the end. NO more Valentines.  No kits for minor holidays like St. Patrick's Day, either.  Is St. Patrick's Day a card sending occasion for me? No.

I have, so far, managed to resist Halloween kits.  Yay, self control.

GOAL! I made 25 cards from the Spellbinders Merry Everything kit

On the 4th day of Christmas I finished making the 25 cards from the Spellbinder's Merry Everything kit that I had set myself as a goal.  Here are last 3, all featuring the VW bug die that came with the kit.

Now I can box this up until next summer when I'll dig into it again.  There is still plenty of product left in the kit. For the moment, however, I've had enough of it.

Getting merry with it, part 3

Yup, I'm starting to slow down with these cards from the Spellbinder's Limited Edition kit. And the kit is still practically full! 

I have 9 more to go to meet my goal of 25 cards from this kit.

Getting merry, part 2

OK, seven more cards using the Spellbinders' Merry Everything kit.  So much cool stuff in one kit, I'm just a little overwhelmed.  So I'm trying to keep it simple. I use some of the patterned paper as a background and select from either the journaling cards or the ephemera for the focal points.

The main character in this kit is the die that creates a car that looks suspiciously like a Volkswagen Sedan (aka VW Bug, Beetle, etc.)

So, I finally put one of the cars together. Oy vey is that fiddly. For my next one I will not attempt to attach the vehicle to the card over an uneven surface.  I thought it would look better to pop up the forward snow bank. No, I won't be doing that again.  Another thing I won't be doing is using double sided silver paper for the bumpers and other detailing.  It was very time consuming to put the bumper bits back on, over and over.  Bet you can't even tell the windows are velum, either.  With the windows being mostly over "snow" it hardly matters.

Still, I am enjoying taking a break from coloring.

Fun fact about my family:  Back in the late 70s or early 80s (dim memory for time) everyone in my family drove a VW, except my sister.  At one time there were 3 Rabbits, a sedan (bug), a van and a Karmann Ghia. No, we didn't own stock in the company, it just worked out that way.  My dad started it. Funny, at no time were they all parked in my parent's yard at the same time, since none of the "kids" were living at home at that time (well, maybe one brother was left). That would have been a photo op, right there.

Getting merry with it!

I'm working with the new Spellbinder's Merry Everything special edition kit.  This kit is huge,  and comes with enough paper and bits to make 25 cards, minimum. So I have another goal, 25 cards from this kit.  It comes with that many card blanks, so I'll know when I've reached my goal.

I used an embossing folder for the background of this last one.  I couldn't ever become a Youtube card maker because I am dreadfully slow at this.  And I have so much admiration for the design team members who stick to the kit contents.  For example, on that top card I used dies from my stash to cut out the XOXO, and on the cat card I used a sentiment from Sunny Studios that read "May your Christmas be purrfect".

The very idea of doing 25 cards with this similar color theme already has me breaking into a sweat and wanting to do something else.  So I will be doing other cards between batches of Merry Everything cards.

One more editorial comment : the adhesive tape and the dimensional foam that comes with the kit are very inconvenient. It's like using a tape runner without the handy applicator.  And the foam squares are tiny. How stingy. I would rather use my ATG any old day.

Valentine Card Kit, Part 2.

About this time last year I bought a card kit from Simon Says Stamp. It was the Limited Edition Valentine Kit for 2018. I wrote about it here.  It came with tons of stuff, and it was a very good value.  At least it would have been a good value if I had the inspiration to use all that stuff.  The main feature of the kit was a large page of stickers.

This year I took out the kit. I had kept it all together since I had barely made a dent in it,and I'm determined to use it up, or almost up.  So, my first plan of attack is the stickers.  It might be another case of sticker sneeze, but here goes.  In order to beef them up, I cut many hearts and postage-stamp edged rectangles from traditional Valentine's colors - red, pink and white. I sneaked in a couple of gold hearts, too.

I heat embossed the scripty background in white on the pink rectangle. The ribbon was from my stash also.

These weren't exactly stickers, more like ephemera. My focal point is a bit spread around on this one.

So freaking pink. Does this remind you of Valentine cards you made in elementary school with construction paper? But, there's no stamping or coloring on any of these. Hey, it's progress.  We'll see what else I can come up with. 

Then I have to see if I can give these puppies away, since I don't mail Valentines.