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Hey there! :) Are you enjoying the holiday time or are you already going slightly mad now that there are only 4 days left until Christmas? I'm still in denial that Christmas is so close because I don't feel the holiday spirit at all. The temperatures and the weather feel more like fall or late summer at times.. And as much as I normally like the warmer, more Mediterranean temperatures, I prefer low temperatures and snow at Christmas time. But that isn't going to happen this year.. Today we have 14°C (or 57°F) which is just surreal..
I've tried so many things to get into the holiday spirit (playing Christmas music, lighting candles, trimming the tree, putting up Christmas decoration, etc etc) but nothing has really worked so far.
Anyway, at least this means that the bright and colourful "Shine" collection by Maggie Holmes for Crate Paper doesn't seem out of place at all right now. Which is good, because in only two days I've made a layout, seven cards and two mini albums with it and I wanted to show you the first part of that today :)
I've already shared this LO on Instagram but I thought it wouldn't hurt to show it here again. This layout took me quite a while and I never felt satisfied with it. I just kinda gave up at some point and decided to leave it as it is. But now, the more often I look at it, the more I like it. I think I just got a bit rusty after such a long time of (almost) no layouts.
Behind the small card with the pink roses (from the ephemera pack) I added some half-hidden journaling. It's not that I don't want others to read what I wrote there. It's just that I don't like my handwriting too much and therefore decided to cover it up a bit.
There's actually not much to be said about them. They are quite simple and straight forward. I just used different bits and pieces from the whole "Shine" collection and for two of the cards I also used my new "happy"-die that I got in one of the Studio Calico Black Friday sales. I'm quite happy (duh) about it because the font is very pretty, it's not too thin and the size is perfect for cards, mini albums and also layouts.
As you can see in the photo above, I just can't do anything without using my Heidi Swapp Color Shine sprays anymore! I mainly use the gold spray (because you can never have too much gold) but for those three cards I used "Mustard", "Tinsel" and "Primrose" or "Rose" (depends on where you search for it, but it's the same).
The six cards pictured above are all 3.5x5". When I cut a 12x12" cardstock to 8.5x11" I always keep the 3.5x12" strip and then cut it down to 3.5x10" so I can later use it for cards. That way almost the entire sheet of cardstock is used and I don't have to throw much away.
The next card is a bit bigger with 4x6". When I make that size, I always cut a 12x12" sheet into three 4x12" strips and then fold them in the middle.
For the "hello" tag I cut out the card from the "Bright"
paper and cut it into a tag shape. Then I adhered one of the gold
circle stickers, punched a hole through it and adhered the tag with a
brad to the patterned paper below. I did this before gluing the heart
patterned paper to the white cardstock so that the backside of the brad
would not be seen inside the card.
Beneath the "Hello" tag I added "Pretty" with the golden puffy stickers so that it would read "Hello Pretty" in the end :)
When I think back about a year, I absolutely didn't like making cards and now it's become completely "normal" that I will always make some cards with a collection or kit I get. I like to have a few cards for different occasions ready for when I need one so that I don't always have to sit down and make one the moment I need it.
Because I especially like to give cards "just because", I always make sure to make some that are not specific (like for a birthday). What about you, do you "mass produce" your cards or do you just make them when you need them?
Now as I've mentioned at the beginning of this long-a** text, I also made two mini albums with the "Shine" collection. I'll share some (read: a lot of) photos in a separate post tomorrow. So stay tuned :) But until then, here's a little sneak peek:
