Chinese Thank you

One of the complications of making foreign language/culture cards is knowing exactly how to use any given word/phrase. This particular thank you is a very formal one; I would not have wanted to make a "cute" card with it. The background panels on all three are from a Sherwin Williams discontinued wallpaper sample book. It is a very thick, elegant pattern, with thread-like strands running through it.

Another complication is mixing up languages occasionally, ahem, as I did with this one. Thanks to my patient and faithful friend, Ben, I have corrected this post to read "Chinese" Thank you instead of Japanese (see his comment on this post). I do recall him mentioning, when I showed him the stamp, that it was a formal form of the word; so that part is correct. As Japanese, I am told, has four levels of thank you, and Ben can read Japanese as well, it never occured to me to confirm the language!

Being accurate is important to me, so I hope anyone who reads my blog will let me know when I have made an error. :-)

Kitties!

We're not cat people here, though we had befriended a neighborhood manx, occasionally setting out goodies for him or her ... my husband initiated the relationship in hopes it would take care of mice. Or so he says. I think he just misses our dog. :-) We haven't seen the cat since the weather got bitter cold, so we'll see.

Anyway, despite not wanting to own a cat, I did think these little darlings would be great for the campus store. The background is a much nicer purple than my camera says it is. :-)

Doggie Devotion

OnyxXpressions is having a great sale right now, and although I think I exhibited some great self-control, I couldn't resist purchasing at least a few stamps. :-) That gave me the starting point I needed for card posting; I've got quite a few cards, and wasn't sure where to start posting. So, I'll be putting up a few OnyxXpressions cards ...

I try to be very practical when purchasing stamps. But while browsing through their catalog to order stamps for foreign language cards, this dog, and the corresponding text, were just too cute to resist!

Post-Christmas greetings!

I hope everyone had a truly wonderful Christmas! We had a very quiet one, at home for the day, which is rare. Despite our son being in Sicily, Stephen was very much with us, thanks to Skype & a web cam! A tradition at Christmas is that our children sing "We wish you a merry Christmas" outside our bedroom door at the appointed "wake up time" (which mercifully is much later now that they're grown up!). Stephen called on his cell phone, and with our daughters (using an extension to keep together (more or less!) we still were sung to! Then we went downstairs, and connected with him on skype, and opened gifts together. It was fun, zooming in on things so that he could see, getting his reaction to his stuff, etc.

Back to stamping on Monday!

Christmas Penguins!

Christmas is such a wonderful time of celebrating Christ's birth, that I make few cards that don't have a specifically Christian meaning or symbol. But this little guy was so cute, and in the dollar pile at a craft store that I impulsively snatched him up. I made them into Spanish and Croatian Christmas cards for the Houghton College store. Why Croatian? Simply because my oldest daughter is familiar enough with the language for me to be confident I had the right translation, lol!

Spanish Christmas

I just realized I did actually make a couple of other Christmas cards this year: foreign language cards. This is a design I created a couple of years ago. I sponged pinks and oranges (latino Christmas cards do not stick to our American/European traditiona reds & greens) on glossy cardstock, then stamped the three kings in black stazon, then computer-printed the scripture on vellum. I had rejected the background panel because I did not want any "lines," but when I looked at it with the vellum overlay, it looked, as you see, very soft, and like light from a star.

More Joy!

And the last of my Christmas cards, I think, the other Dovely Joy image I mounted ... just in time for it to be delivered before Christmas! I used foil flakes on this one ... this image just begged for it!

Joy!

As I worked on "recreating" or fixing cards yesterday, I came across two of these "Dovely Joy" panels, and easily made them into cards. This was my favorite Christmas stamp of last year; I must have made seven or eight panels with it, and each one was a little different. A couple might become cards next year...

This one was made with Antiquities embossing powder; I don't believe they are made any more, but they are very similar to Tim Holtz' distress powders. The background was a silent night stamp applied with distress inks.

Wise Men Still Seek Him

Friends of ours have me make a set of ten Christmas cards each year, and last Christmas they chose this design for this year. A good thing: today was the only day I had to make cards for friends and family, and there's no way I could possibly do that. So, every single card was from my "Christmas box" of cards or parts of cards that were begun and not finished, left over from finished cards, goofed cards (smudged, glued crookedly, etc), etc.

I changed this card slightly from the one I had made last year. I used distress inks, and getting a perfect image with that ink with the wise men image was very challenging, and so for the ten cards I completed, I had nearly twice that many of that particular image that had to be pitched.

The "parchment" map was created by using two or three shades of brown distress inks on old white parchment-like typewriter paper, then rolling Ranger Butterscotch across it for a mellower look.

I had hoped to participate in the smARTworks "word challenge" this month; if I weren't already making a card with smARTworks' stamps, I wouldn't have been able to participate, so that's happy!

Link for inspiration

This is a site I have not yet taken advantage of, but I may today if I can't get a serious dent into my personal Christmas card making. I finished my last cards for selling Monday night, and delivered them on our way out of town for Christmas shopping, and will post a picture later today ... it was one of those designs that was fairly simple, but required using ink that did not consistently give a decent image, so, making them last minute as I did, I didn't make more than the ten I needed for my friend, and there was no time to take a picture before I left town yesterday! So, I'll make a couple more today...

Anyway, this site has some free printable Christmas tags, though I hope if you really like and use them, you'll consider making an actual purchase. Fun stuff! Just click HERE.

Hurrah ... I'm free!

Well, perhaps my title is overstating, but it's been a long four months of trying to get enough stock for a local craft store leasing 4 foot x 4 foot spaces, a campus store wanting foreign language cards, and the one craft fair I do each year, a two-day event at the same college. I still have a few responsibilities for the next week, but the pressure is off, oh happy day!

Monday I'll be posting cards again ... I've got quite a pile of unposted one, enough to last me into the new year!

Now I'm headed for bed ... I'll be heading for jail ministry after church tomorrow, so I want to get a good night sleep. I've got some catching up to do, lol!

Card remake

I put cards that I have not yet posted into a file by that name, but I don't always remember to move the image to it's proper place once I've posted. This is one card I'm sure has not been on the blog yet, though it's a remake of one of my old favorites. I never fail to be encouraged by this wonderful scripture!

Tiger card

This was a stamp chosen for my foreign/language culture cards; it will fit in well with Asian and African cards. I really enjoy the look of this guy ... very sophisticated cat!

Rejoice in the Lord!

Here's a second card with figures from the same series I used in yesterday's card. If it looks familiar, it's because it comes from a set of note cards I made last year. The notecard sets have no layers or embellishing, and so are easy to make into other cards. :-)

We are more than conquerors!

I realized that although I have no translator for Swahili, it's not a language spoken universally in Africa anyway, and these stamps certainly have an African flavor to them, so I hope these images -- I have others in this series -- will make some people happy. I love them, so bold and joyous and "colorable!"