Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Sipping tea and making cards



Before I left for the craft retreat last Thursday morning, I ran by Publix for paper tea filters since Kroger didn't have any. And of course any new teas on the tea aisle always catch my eye, so I had to try a box of this Twinings Lemon & Ginger Tea with probiotics. I never get tired of a good lemon and ginger tea, plus …

The individually packaged teas are always great to travel with. This tea was excellent, with just enough ginger to give it that bit of a peppery bite, and I kept my tea mug filled with this tea for most of the trip!

And let me just tell you what an experienced card maker I am. I'm *so* experienced that I ordered two colors of brown ink that were so similar, you couldn't tell that the pine cones of this Stampin' Up stamp were supposed to be two different colors. And naturally, I didn't bother to open the ink and test it until I got to Pine Mountain. Sigh. My intention was to make this Christmas Season design from Stampin' Up the primary design for family and friends' Christmas cards this year, so this ink thing presented a problem. Happily, I had packed the gold leaf I learned to embellish cards with earlier this year, and voila, we now have gilded pine cones. I could totally live with that!

In fact, I love to stamp designs and then cut them out with my dies, so I cut out a *lot* of pine cones this weekend. The challenge is, I don't like for any two cards to be exactly alike. So then I decided red plaid might be nice.

Or green! Who doesn't love green?

After a while, though, I got bored with gold leafing everything and wondered if I could glitterize my pine cones with glittery pink embossing powder. The answer is yes. Yes, I can.

And when I got through with all of that, I started making a few tea-themed cards with this delightful Cozy Cupfuls stamp set by Marcella Hawley for Power Poppy. I still have plenty more cards to make, but I got a great head start thanks to the retreat and the encouragement of my crafty friends.



And I thought those would be all the Christmas card designs I make this year, but then my retreat friend Vicki shared these new *stitched* designs using the Merry Stitching dies from Spellbinders. Oh. My. Goodness! I ordered the dies immediately so that I can try my hand at making cards with these gorgeous embellishments. Have you started on your Christmas cards yet?

4 comments:

  1. All your cards are lovely and I really like the "Christmas begins with Christ" sentiment. I'm doing a hybrid card this year - my artist friend (Helen) did some Christmas carol notecards (blank inside) that I really like so I bought them for my cards and plan to stamp a Christmas sentiment inside. That won't happen until after Thanksgiving, though, as all my children/grandchildren are coming to visit that week. At least I have a plan!

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  2. What beautiful cards! I especially like the gilded pinecones.
    I've started "thinking" about my Christmas cards, but haven't done anything about them yet. I usually have photo cards made up, so I have to first decide on what photo or photos to use.

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  3. Beautiful cards!
    I have not started Christmas cards. With the unreliability of the post office, I think I will mail them sooner this year.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Ginger, and mailing them early is my plan too. I'm going to send these first ones to the relatives who live farthest away. *Maybe* they'll get there by Christmas!

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