February Christmas cards

I think I have mentioned before that I am taking part in a challenge to make Christmas/Chanukah/holiday cards all year long so that I am not scrambling in December.  My goal is 8 cards per month.  I had already completed four cards in February and used an example in Cards magazine to inspire the second design.  While I love how it turned out, it was a labor-intensive card (and heavy!  hand delivery only!) and making four of them was pretty tedious.  So even though before when I have made several of the same (easy) design I have counted it for only one day, this time I am counting all four cards as separate days, because dang, it felt like four days' worth!  Anyway, here's the card:

The chipboard squares were recycled from cardboard packaging.  I might buy pre-made chipboard in fancy shapes (at least until I get my own die cutting machine) but I refuse to buy squares!  Though I do now have to buy a new blade for my paper cutter!

The designer papers all came from a DCWV paper pad in my stash, as did the fiber, ribbon and button.  The metal tree is from Making Memories.  I got the alphabet stamps in a box lot of used cling mount stamps, so I don't know the company there.

The other card for today is a custom request, my first one!  It is for someone whose husband's birthday is on St. Patrick's Day and she wanted a combo birthday/St. Pat's card with leprechauns.  Oh, and the card is for a guy so no ribbons or flowers or other floofy stuff.   I have no leprechaun stamps so this is my first foray into digistamp purchase and use:

The digistamp is from Pink Cat Studio, an online store that sells both actual and digital stamps.  I'm not a big fan of cute, but I really like their stuff.  For a digital novice, the site was easy to navigate, shop, pay, and download my images.  (Disclosure:  this is purely my opinion, not receiving anything from TCP to promote them! Image is copyright Pink Cat Studio.)  Digital stamps are a great way to quickly obtain an image when you don't have an actual stamp, and are much easier to store!  I think I will be doing more digitals in the future.

I printed out the leprechaun and used my high-tech circle cutters (AKA lids of assorted plastic containers) to cut it out along with a slightly larger circle to mat the image.  I colored the image with Prismacolor pencils and made my first attempt at using Gamsol as a blending tool.  I really loved how it turned out and enjoy the process of coloring immensely.  I see more of that in my future too.

Finally I layered the image onto a light brown woody looking background paper that was layered onto the card itself.  I distressed the edges a bit with some dark brown ink.  I added the shamrock buttons (unknown source) and stamped the sentiment (Stampendous).  I had printed out an Irish blessing for the inside of the card and added one more shamrock button there as well.  Finally, thinking it needed just a little something more, I used green glitter glue to cover the shamrock on the leprechaun's hat.   I am pleased with  the end result and hope the purchaser and recipient are too.

Thanks for looking, and have a great day!