This card was inspired by a card on Pinterest by Birgit Edblom. I love these pine forest dies. I know you have six million trees, however these are still a very different look than all of our other collections. It is both the size and the clustering that is appealing. The background colouring was achieved by working with Distress Stains. The moon has been coloured with Ranger's Perfect Pearls in Biscotti. Both of the top and bottom white panels have been cut with the Stitched Snowdrifts dies and both pieces have been raised with foam tape. Before any of the white layers were added to the card, the sky was splattered with Biscotti Perfect Pearls.

Any salutation would work for the front of this card. You might want to consider it as a winter birthday card! This would be one of those cards to mass produce if time were of the essence!

I love this playful kitten from Stampendous. In the card below, we have stamped him on brown velvet paper with black Versafine ink and clear embossed. We have touched up his eyes with some green chalk, and his nose with a Black Glaze pen. When you're working on velvet paper, it's very hard to colour with an ink source. This is the reasoning behind the chalk and the Glaze pen. The leaf panel was made using two maple leaves stamps from Frog's Whiskers, both positive and negative. The stamps were inked with VersaMark ink and stamped onto manila tag cardstock. We then clear embossed the images. Next, we distressed the panel with some fall coloured Distress Inks.

The banner was made by cutting a 5 1/2 inch strip of manila. After having stamped the 'Thinking of You' in the centre, we added two score lines about 1/4 inch apart on either side of the wording for the fold. A trick for cutting a v-notch in a strip is to simply put a pencil dot halfway in the width of the band, and cut into that dot. Without that dot, your eye doesn't see precisely mid-point and your cut will be off center. We added a die-cut distressed leaf to the top of the banner just to tie things together.

A number of the companies are designing beautiful treelines and forest images. This is a stamp from Impression Obsession. Bev has used watercolour paper and lightly coloured with shades of Pumice Stone, Ice-Spruce, Pine Needles and Scattered Straw Distressed Inks. A white cardstock snowbank was shadowed at the top, and glued to the top of the stamped image. Then the image was die-cut with a circle, and a bit of Pumice Stone was added at the edges for shadow. The die-cut circle was then raised with foam tape, and adhered back in place.

The card was finished with a Merry Christmas stamp, a tight frame of grey cardstock, and then to a mottled grey and white card. It is a very easy twist on a standard Christmas card.

This is an older set of Spellbinder label dies, but I still find them extremely useful. There are three separate dies which are all approximately the same size. As you can see below, they take up a good portion of an A2 card.  The background paper is black print on distressed tan which has been dry embossed and sanded. We then used a finger dauber to colour the white raised design with Distress Ink in Broken China. We did use Swiss Dots embossing folder on the blue strip on the right side of the card. Joining the tan to the blue, we've used a strip of black houndstooth printed tape from Little B. Love these little rolls that are only 3 mm wide. They add a great accent!

Speaking of accents, these rhinestone/pearl blossoms and butterflies are great addition to any of your projects. All the beads in one blossom are connected by one glue-dot, for easy placement. We have used one of these flowers just below the Happy Birthday on the card above. A great assortment to have on hand at $4.50 a package.

I know you're going to have to look very carefully to see that there is an embossed edge at the top and bottom of the poinsettia card below. In this case, we've used a heavier vellum which didn't crack when we embossed it. If you're using a lighter weight vellum, the trick is to sandwich it between a couple of sheets of computer paper before you put in into your embossing folder. When you protect your thinner vellum like this, you are less apt to have rips in your image. You'll want to experiment with your particular folder and how many sheets of protective paper you need on your vellum.

I love the intricate line design in this poinsettia from Penny Black. We were able to leave this without a lot of colouring, because the design is so complete on its own. These are the type of stamps that allow you to make quick yet elegant cards, which we all need this time of year. The embossing powder we used is called Moonstone from Stampendous. It is a lovely warm champagne colour. I hope you are starting to collect your thoughts about your Christmas card designs. It's never too early!

Paper Cuts has designed a great new die to create three windows in a flip card. If you are tired of trying to measure where your dies need to sit to create a three window look, you will love this new one piece die! The card designs below were made with printed paper and some simple stamping. Because the shape of th window is circular in the centre, your 1 and 1 1/8 inch round punches will work well to layer up on the tabs. The blue card is a good example of using up some of your printed paper, and she added a die-cut bee to the middle circle. The pink card has a stamped layer and then we used two small verses and a small die cut on the tabs.

Although both of these cards are missing verse panels, hopefully you can see what your 5 1/2 by 10 inch layout looks like. There are some great visual directions on the back of the die package showing the width of each panel, etc. I found the die very user friendly. The possibilities for this design are endless!

When you start designing this card, you'll find scads of small stamps and dies that you didn't remember that you had which are perfect for this card.

This beautiful dandelion card was made by Bev with two stamps from Northwoods. The cluster was stamped in Hero Arts Cerulean Blue onto white glossy cardstock. The left side and across the bottom of the panel was gently distressed with Broken China. Then, the large single head was stamped and embossed three times with Judikins white embossing powder. The cardstock is a light grey speckle which adds to the dandelion dots.

If you're very frustrated with all the white embossing powders you've tried, you'll need to break down and buy Judikins White. It is a lovely fine grained powder which allows for exquisite detail. It is one of the few powders that I have used that is truly 'white' and not off-white. They do not sell in smaller jars, only in a 2 oz. container, which presently sells for $9.95. If you're not ready to think about the impending fall, this might be the perfect summer card to whip up.