Papercut Labs 12 Days of Christmas Crop and Hop

As many of you know, I recently became involved with Papercut Labs, a new online Australian business offering inspiration through a variety of online classes. I even taught my own class throughout November called 'Flashy Cards Fast' (which has now got ongoing registration available! If you ever wanted to learn some fabulous techniques for creating cards on a time-budget then feel free to join in the class at any time. Registration details are here!)

But today I'm here with my Studio Calico hat on, as we join forces in the 12 Days of Christmas Crop and Hop!! 





As the name suggests, there are two components to this event!
Firstly, the BLOG HOP which started on the Papercut Labs blog on Monday 8th December. The list of participants is below:

Monday, 8 December 2014: Papercut Labs
Tuesday, 9 December 2014: A Piece of Cake Designs
Wednesday, 10 December 2014: Kellie Stamps
Thursday, 11 December 2014: Heidi Swapp (via Kim Jeffress)
Friday, 12 December 2014: The Scrappery
Saturday, 13 December 2014: Seriously Scrapbooking
Sunday, 14 December 2014: Maya Road (via Angella Peardon)
Monday, 15 December 2014: Stampin’ Up!
Tuesday, 16 December 2014: Scrapmatts
Wednesday, 17 December 2014: D-lish Scraps
Thursday, 18 December 2014: Studio Calico (via Natalie Elphinstone) <<< YOU ARE HERE
Friday, 19 December 2014: Papercut Labs

Each stop along the way is promising you an inspiring project to get you crafting over this busy Christmas season, and each of these sites is a sponsor for the amazing set of prizes on offer. Which brings me to the second part...

The ONLINE CROP is how you go about winning one of these prizes! Simply visit our Facebook Events Page here and upload a project that fits one or more of the 12 challenges (this is where it ties into the 12 days of Christmas!!) For more entries, simply 'like' or comment on one of the previously entered projects. All the challenges, rules and details are here.You'll need to get cracking though... it finishes on the 20th!

Studio Calico have sponsored two awesome PRIZES! The first is this....

Yep, you read that correctly! It's a 3 month Card Kit Subscription for one lucky participant.
And the second prize is super fun too! It's free entry into the Send Joy class. I can tell you from personal experience, I'm enrolled in this class myself and it's been really motivating :-) 


Now onto the project I wanted to share with you today! Might I suggest you get ready with a cuppa, 'cos it's a long one!

Often at this time of year I start thinking that I really should go through my scrapbooking stash and de-clutter a bit lot. Occasionally I even attempt that. But most of the time that process only leaves me with the feeling of "that's still such a cool product I can't possibly get rid of it. I must use it on something" and not much ever makes it into the de-stash pile! Seems I suck at culling my supplies!

So instead I set myself a little challenge. I decided to go through each of the 12 scrapbook kits I've received from Studio Calico this past year as part of the Creative Team and try and make a further dent in them by creating a Christmas card from each one. The challenge of course is that only the November kit has anything Christmas-themed in it, so it was truly going to be an adventure to see if it was achievable.

I went through each kit in order, starting with January's Copper Mountain. A good place to start given it ultimately turned out to be one of my top 3 favourite kits from the year!

Just to let you know... the photo I've taken of each kit is the bits and pieces I pulled out that I thought might work for a Christmas card. I still keep all my old kits separated by month, but in each month's crop bag goes the Main Kit plus all the Add Ons so this is a big mix up of product. And this is just what I have left over which means there are half-finished packets of stuff, and scraps of paper rather than full sheets. But that's the whole point right? It's about using up what I've got hanging around!

And here's the first card I made. If you've ever seen my Instagram account before then you know I've got a 'thing' for deers anyway, but at Christmas time they become one of my go-to embellishments of choice. You're going to see a few deers along the way here!

I started on a downhill roll because February's Sugar Rush kits really are my No.1 favourite of the year.  It's totally me - pinks and aquas and sweet girly Valentine's themes.

The saving grace as far as Christmas is concerned though was those silver glitter triangles which I saw Emily on the Studio Calico gallery turn into Christmas trees with the addition of enamel dots. A genius idea which I immediately lifted for this card!

The March Office Hours kits are perfect for all you traditional-Christmas-colour-scheme-lovers out there. Packed with red and green and gold, there was so many possibilities here.

And yes, there was another deer!

I was able to pick out very similar colours from April's Bluegrass Farm kits too.

But had to use my imagination a bit for a Christmas style embellishment. The cork leaves became holly leaves, and I painted a trio of the Dear Lizzy Alphabet Stickers red to become the berries.

So many fond memories going through each of the kits, because Camelot was another favourite.

And it was the sparkly gold Heidi Swapp stickers that saved this card from being too non-Christmassy!

June's Hello Hello kits presented a challenge, and I probably struggled with this one the most.

But with all the different choices of stars (stamps, puffy stickers, plastic ones too) I figured that was the sign of what direction to take. In fact it was probably at this point that I realised most of the kits, or at least the bits I was picking out of them, all contained stars. I knew they had been one of my favourite embellishment choices for a while, but now I know who to blame! ;-)

Oh the lovely whimsical July Penny Arcade kits with all of their Ashley Goldberg designed papers...

But it was the chevron pattern in one of the Bazzill papers that ultimately inspired this card, as I cut out separate strips and layered them up to look like a forest of Christmas trees.

As I said previously, if a kit has a deer in it then it's going to be my embellishment of choice, and the August Sandlot kits have a whole patterned paper full of them!

It also had the striking combination of bright green and red and gold sequins so I was pretty set with this one :-)

September's Poet Society turned out to be quite a surprise. On first glance it's full of a rainbow of happy colours and lots of fun embellishments, but not much that you could call Christmassy.

But the idea of turning those triangle stamps into a Christmas tree was bordering on clever if I do say so myself (!) and the card quickly came together after that. In fact, this card was one of my favourites of the lot and ultimately became the basis for a quick tutorial over on the Studio Calico blog as well.

I definitely contemplated using the Silkscreen from the October Underground kits on my card somehow, but it was a little too big and overwhelming for my 4x6" base, so I had to figure out something else.

My little friend the deer came to the rescue again when I found him in amongst the Maggie Holmes stickers, and after framing him I backed it with simple block colours in the traditional Christmas scheme.

November was easy of course. The Walden kits, especially it's Add On Pine Hill was packed with Christmassy supplies so this was a no-brainer.

In fact the only difficulty lay in which bits to choose out of so many! I went with the gold wreath as the winner :-)

Which only left the current kit Park Ave to play with, and I was already on a roll from just working on all my Creative Team layouts prior. I really wanted to use the diamond chipboard shapes and played around with them for ages, but it just wasn't coming together for me.

So I went with some leftover snowflakes as the focus because I'm not sure I'll have too many other occasions to use them otherwise. Because even though it doesn't snow for us here in Australia at Christmas I figured it's still an acceptable Christmas embellishment? Anyway, it's cute enough!

And that was it. 12 Christmas cards from non-Christmas kits! Here they all are lined up next to one another so you can fully appreciate them ;-)

I think I've passed my own challenge (if I can say that?!) and I've learned a few things along the way. I'm certainly happy that it's proven you don't need to go out and buy a tonne of new product at this time of year if you don't want to. Scrapping with your scraps can easily yield some fairly impressive Christmassy results!

So there's just one more stop along the way on the Blog Hop, and that will be back on the Papercut Labs blog at this time tomorrow. But in the meantime please check out the Crop happening on the Facebook page in order to be in the running for our amazing prizes.

And have a Merry Christmas!

Same Same, but Different

Bethany had two piano teachers this year. Wonderful, beautiful, lovely, identical twin piano teachers.

She still can't tell them apart. 

Either can we. 

So she was in such a dilemma when it came time to giving them a Thank You / Merry Christmas gift each at her last lesson this week. When she sat down to address the tags we made to adorn each gift she realised that she wouldn't know which gift to give to which teacher!! We settled on the idea that she would just write a very generic (but meaningful) message without mentioning any names! Cheeky!

We had already purposefully made some tags earlier in the month. Tags that were very similar, but also very different. I thought that would be about right?

The tags were created by combining some letterpress labels, with the Printable Journal cards released last month with the Walden kits at Studio Calico.

I stacked those two elements up on top of a watercoloured tag and added a few extra pieces like the enamel dots on the reindeer horns (which has become a bit of a standard decoration for this little fella!)

And finished them off with a bit of my stamped Christmas ribbon.

I'll also be entering these tags into the 12 Days of Christmas challenges hosted by Papercut Labs. It obviously fits the criteria for Challenge #12 'Make it Chrismtassy'! Have you checked out the challenges there? They're quite straightforward, and you could easily combine lots of them into one project. For example, I could possibly pass this off for Challenge #4 'Stitch Something' because I ran them through my sewing machine as I usually do.

There's some pretty amazing prizes up for grabs, sponsored by all these generous companies. It's worth having a look at, trust me! You'll be hearing more from me about this in a couple of days as well...... but don't wait for that ;-)



Supplies:

Walden Printable Christmas Cards Letterpress Bundle Letterpress Plate: Magical Sentiments Studio Calico Craft Die: Labels Letterpress Plate: Labels Letterpress Ink: Red Letterpress Ink: Gold Color Theory Enamel Dots: Aqua Color Theory Enamel Dots: Yellow Christmas Ribbon Stamping

InLinkz.com

Flashy Cards Fast

This gives me goosebumps to even say this out loud but in November I'm going to be teaching my very first online class with Papercut Labs called "Flashy Cards Fast"!! Eeeeek! Can you hear me jumping up and down squealing with delight over here?

Card making has become a real passion of mine recently (you may have noticed!!) to the point where I would say I am just as comfortable and excited making cards as I am scrapbooking. That's something I never would have imagined a couple of years ago. I always thought you were either one or the other ;-)

But I live a busy life, and as much as I love crafting I just don't have hours and hours to dedicate to it. As a Mum of two girls with another on the way, and still working full time I'm lucky to make it into my craft room some days at all! And let me tell you, those girls have hectic social lives. Just this weekend gone we had two birthday parties to attend, and received invitations to two more for the following weekend. There's 4 birthday cards I 'need' to make right there!

So that's why I love this idea of being able to create Flashy Cards Fast. Is it possible to make a decent card in under 5 minutes? I think it is!! Let me show you...

        

This is the card I whipped up for the video. Layers of torn tulle is what I've added under the journaling card ('cos I know it was a little hard to see) It adds some lovely soft texture, plus I'm all about using up whatever supplies you've got on hand.

During the 5 weeks of November I'll be showing you how to make 25 different cards on a time budget. These will range from cards made in 1 minute to cards made in 20 minutes. Each will include step by step instructions, and many will come with a video sharing my creative process from beginning to end.

Every week will focus on a different occasion including Babies, Birthdays and Bereavement. There will be feminine cards and masculine cards. But every single one will be totally adaptable to your own occasion and particular style. There won't be any prescribed supplies for the class because I want you to be able to take whatever materials you've got in your craft room and put them to good use! This class will also be about using up your hoarded stash ;-)

There will be lots and lots of techniques covered too. Paper layering is a favourite of mine, and I'll share some tricks on how to match different colours and patterns. But other techniques include stamping, die-cutting, creating shaker cards, origami and a good healthy dose of Mixed Media!! Check out some of my other sneaks here to see what I mean.

REGISTRATION for Flashy Cards Fast is now open!
And to celebrate we're offering you a discount! For this week only you can sign up for only $24.95 which is less than a dollar a card!! On Wednesday 22nd October it will go back up to it's regular price of $30 so get in quick!
Classes will start on 1st November and go for 5 weeks, but once you're signed up you'll have access to it forever so you can come back and take the lessons at your own pace. Or return for a refresher whenever you feel the need.
There will be a private forum where you can ask me any questions you like and to chat with other participants. You'll be able to upload your own cards to our gallery so you can 'show and share', and see what other people are creating. It's going to be so much fun!


And lastly, what's a advertising post without a good GIVEAWAY?!!
 

Studio Calico have generously donated this fabulous prize which includes items from their September Card Kit to get one lucky winner stashed up for their card making journey! I've actually used this same kit in a few of my cards for the class and can vouch for how handy it is. Especially that stamp set - it's a really useful one to have on hand. So far I've used it on an Engagement card, a New Baby card and a general Congratulations card!

To WIN everything you see here, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post. Tell me whether you consider yourself a cardmaker or not, tell me what you'd like to see in a card class, let me know if you feel confident making Flashy Cards Fast.... I don't mind what you say! Just leave a comment!

Want a second chance to win? Pop over to the Papercut Labs blog and leave a comment on this post to be entered again!

Open internationally. We'll draw a winner on Wednesday 22nd October at 8pm AEST. Good luck!