Bearing many gifts

Hi everyone! Welcome back...I hope everyone is in their own happy place because I am...doing what I love the best..tah dah..... making cards.

Day 2 of my 100 days of christmas ...I have come bearing gifts. Its a very bright and colourful card and at its centre is a bunch of gifts layered over each other.

The gift boxes stamp is one from the deep red cling stamps family. It features two gift boxes - one decorated with polka dots and the other with stripes, which I stamped on spare card stock, painted using peerless watercolour from the peerless water colour bonus pack of 40. I then 'fussy cut' the gift boxes images and laid them out on the card before I stuck them using glue and double sided tape.

Just a little heads up....I cut the watercolour sheets into small strips and laid them out on cardstock with their names written on the bottom as described on a blog or class I read or did...can't remember which but its a great suggestion. My fav colours are daffodil yellow, turquoise blue,chrome orange, alizarine red, gamboge yellow and grass green.

I added some glitter glue...you can use any one from your local art and craft store. The accent pieces on the bottom of the card is crafters companion green pearlescent card stock I bought years ago (just found a scrap of it so I used it...again some old with the new)and bazzill's gold foil card stock.

Its been a blast. Thank you for reading and see you tomorrow for the 3rd day of christmas.

Don't forget to leave me your comments.

Do you make your own envelopes for your Handmade Cards?

If you are like me, your answer to this question would be Yes!!!

You see I like crafting so when I learnt from Crafter's Companion, I could make my own envelopes,I was excited. I bought the Ultimate Crafter's Companion Tool . Its been probably 4 years and I still use it today for scoring and making envelopes and boxes. The tool is really versatile....

Anyway, I used to buy envelopes from an art store for my handmade cards. Coloured envelopes, texturized envelopes and oftentimes I encountered a few issues.

1) The card was often times too big for the envelope because I would forget to measure before cutting (my fault) and there was no way of trimming it without spoiling the design

2 ) Some of my customers would request certain sizes of cards and I had to go searching stationery / art stores in Trinidad (and there aren't many) to get the particular size envelope

3) It was costly and at the time customers were not willing to pay extra so I had to absorb the loss

4) The store would run out of stocks and there I go again looking for envelopes

When I found the online store crafter's companion, you could imagine I was pretty excited. I bought paper in bulk from a paper company in Trinidad and for a fraction of the cost (more like 1/20 the cost) I was hooked and begun making my own envelopes. Since then I have designed my own envelopes adding other elements to the outside of the cards.

Now I can adjust the sizes of the envelopes to customers request, the cost of making cards have reduced, less time is spent hunting all over Trinidad for envelopes and I no longer run out of envelopes.

Again, thank you for visiting my blog ....till next time. Don't forget to leave me a comment.