THANK-ful for the holidays

we are getting close to the end of our ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ year, so this is a great time to take stock of how many cards we've completed, go back and add sentiments inside the cards, make sure they all have envelopes, etc etc. being as we're coming up on thanksgiving, it's also a good time to think about the cards we're all going to need after the holiday... so this fortnight we're making thank you cards!

colorburst-ed snowflakes made with tim holtz's "layered snowflakes" die, from painted, embossed and modelling paste-ed strathmore watercolor paper; patterned papers: basic grey, my mind's eye, hambly, autumn leaves + sheet music; doily scraps from my stash... ok technically some are from my mom's stash, lol; glitter paper: best creation; extra storebought snowflakes: recollections + october afternoon ; brads: mme, eyelet outlet; ink: colorbox; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine 

i have a shocking true confession to make: there has never been a year in which i don't wind up needing at least one or two extra cards at the very last minute. usually because someone i wasn't expecting to, kindly sent me a beautiful handmade card! on the other hand, i'm not someone who always likes to put a sentiment on the outside of her cards. by now i think you may have guessed what i am getting at here, right?  the cards you see above are exactly the right tone to be thank you notes. they will almost certainly be thank you notes. but i haven't put a sentiment on the outside or the inside yet... just in case i need a couple more cards at the last minute. it's called "hedging your bets" lol!

as for the cards themselves, i'm still pursuing my, "make a few similar cards while you've got all the stuff out" strategy. in this case, "all the stuff" for the bases consisted of some dearly hoarded ancient basic grey not-too-xmassy blues and greens, the very last sheet of shimmery hambly snowflake paper, some not-very-old bright white sheet music, and the off-cuts of doilies from all the cards this year that had partial doilies on them.

here's the basic recipe for colorburst diecuts: take a piece of "extra" watercolor paper that was painted, spritzed, sprinkled or smooshed with colorburst in the appropriate colors for your project... (i wind up with these on a regular basis. in this case, my first few attempts at our embossing challenge did not turn out how i wanted at the time, but they were still colorful and fun, so i saved them for later!) ...add some stamping, stenciling, modeling paste or glitter paste randomly to the paper. allow to dry completely. use your favorite die (in this case, it's tim holtz's "layered snowflakes" bigz die) to make them into useful shapes. et voila! snowflakes for EVERYBODY! ♥♥♥

as a focal point, i diecut some super-saturated, super-textural colorburst snowflakes in a few sizes, inked the edges really well so they'd stand out from the backgrounds, and added brads as well as extra layers, extra glitter, or both!

i was very inspired by the current atlantic hearts sketch challenge (#237), though as you can see, i played with rotation and proportion quite a bit, so i admit that some of these are more like "kissing cousins" to the original, lol! i'm also linking up with the simon says stamp wednesday challenge blog whose current theme is "snow white" for which you can use either element, which is good bc my snow is blue, lol!

stephanie has a beautiful thank you card for you to drool over at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and a second tag to see on her blog, as well!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥