It's beginning to look like Christmas......

Well, after being shocked by seeing all the Christmas cards being made by crafters and posted up, and then going into one of my favourite shops in the city and catching them putting up their Christmas deco's I eventually got into the swing myself and made some Christmas cards! You can blame Michelle Zindorff - she started me on this road to using my ink pads as a paint pallette and practicing brayering.  I really like this style.  The stained glass effect on the Christmas trees was done using peeloffs stuck on vellum, coloured with either gel pens or my SU markers, and then I turned them over and used an embossing tool on the back to create a 'puffed up' look (description courtesy of the nearly 14 year old granddaughter).  I then painstakingly fussy cut them and this took the longest time as my hands are not as good as they were doing this type of work.

I then grabbed the inkpads - mainly SU ones - and my brayer and began to either layer on the ink using successive layers of different colours (while I had my Michelle Zindorff file open on the computer, reading about how she did each thing and trying to replicate a similar look!) or swiping the pad directly onto the SU whisper white card or using ink sponged on with foam to add another dimention.  I used the punched out circle idea from a sticky pad, and the torn out hill shape to brayer over also to create the appearance of a moon and hills at night.  I then either embossed with clear or gold or silver embossing powder, or direct stamped various stamps from Snowflack Spot, Baroque Motifs, Snow Flurries, Many Merry Messages, and Merry, Merry.  Didn't realise I had so many until I started this! I also used gold peel-offs on some for the message.

Here are a few examples!

I had some stained-glass trees left over, and so used them on a piece of paper I had first embossed in my Cuttlebug with a folder called Snowflakes. They looked OK as well. I used either peel-offs or rub-ons for the message.

I have made some others as well, but will leave these for later.

What else have I been doing?  Nothing much but it seems I was always busy - went to a fantastic version of Miss Siagon last Friday night at our lovely old Theatre Royal in Hobart.  All the girls went with us, and we all thought it was excellent.  We were sitting right up front and the singing and music was loud, but so good - and the helicopter! I made my tummy rumble! Wow - what an excellent presentation of the events.  I can remember the storming of the gates by the Viet Kong and the images beamed around the world of it all; the people left behind - crying and begging and falling of the skids of the last helicopter out....... and when John and I were in Ho Chi Min city last year we were there on the grounds of the palace  as well.  It bought it all back to me then and to see the production it just came alive for me again.  We were so anti the Vietnam War in those days, and so the scenes were both good and bad - mixed memories that were represented well in this piece of theatre. Amazing how one's perception of something can be so influenced by experience and so different to someone elses. The granddaughters were intrigued by the love story and the universality of it,  and the music of course.

Well, that's enough - thanks for reading!