Depression is something that fills my world like something that clouds crystal clear water. It obscures a beautiful view.
But I don’t want it to define me and I don’t want it to define my little piece of cyberspace. It is with me, always, but although at times it doesn’t feel like it, I do have power over it. I know I have power over it. Those good-thought inducing neurones exist, I just need to find ways to cause them to fire off more often than the bad-thought ones.
Enter my paper craft passion.
Paper craft is something that I adore. I just love to scrapbook and make cards. I haven’t done quilling yet, but I am sure that once I give it a go, I will love that too.
And so I have decided to change up the format of my blog a little bit. As you know, I blog with great irregularity, and I blog with abandon about whatever grips my heart on any given day. That is unlikely to change but I realise it can be relentlessly dark-filled and I don’t necessarily want to leave you with that darkness. Thus, I am going to trial a new routine to balance the darkness and it will look like this:
Monday – Make a Card Monday
Tuesday – Tell Your Story Tuesday
Wednesday – One Word Wednesday (it is highly unlikely this will involve just one word on the page).
Thursday – To be decided (any ideas anyone?)
Friday – Favourite Five Friday
I’m setting Saturday and Sunday aside for my family, but there is a great chance you will find me here as well, because, you know, I do love the sound of my own voice. HA!
For this Make a Card Monday I just had to do a Christmas Card and in the run up to christmas there may be a few more. Are you aware that there are only 58 days until Christmas – I nearly had a heart attack when I found out!
What does Christmas mean to you?
For me, it is filled with so much meaning. In my childhood, with my dad’s alcoholism, our year was pretty much a continuous unpredictable form of chaos. But come Christmas Day my parents would pull out all the stops to make it as special as possible. My parents could have had the most awful flaming row on Christmas Eve, but come Christmas Day we would wake up to presents and love and laughter. For one day in the year at least, we were like a normal family.
As I grew up this day represented more and more to me of what family time should mean and when I got married and had my own family, it was the one day of the year where I pulled out all the stops. I wasn’t a great cook, but I loved cooking the turkey, the ham, the vegetables and the dessert. I loved the family coming together and the warmth that glowed inside my heart as we all fed until we were stuffed, and laughed. Oh my, how I loved the laughing. And I didn’t care about the mess at the end of the day (which I never cleaned up until the next day because, you know, I’m lazy like that – and I didn’t want anything to tear me away from my beautiful glowing family), I just cared that we were together.
Christmas cards are a penny a piece, but I still love to make mine to send out. There is a certain joy to be found in creating a card at this time of year and know that someone will receive it and put it on their mantlepiece, or sideboard, or wherever people store their cards these days. A piece of you that they get to enjoy – I like that.
Today I have for you a classic card.
It should probably be noted that I use whatever I have in stock at the time. I’ve been paper crafting for around 3 years now and I have quite a collection (one day I’ll give you a tour of my office). I really do encourage you to do the same – just use whatever you have on hand. These cards are easy to make and are very adaptable.
For my card base I had some black 15cm x 15cm cards that I bought at Kmart. They are around $3 for 5 cards and are really quite good quality.
I then used my silhouette cameo to cut cream card stock to 14,5cm x 14,5cm. (I will do a post on this machine in the future, so watch out for that)
I then embossed the cream card using a dot embossing folder I had using my big shot embossing/cutting machine. I had the idea that I would emboss the entire card, but the embossing folder was only an A6 size, so it left a portion unembossed. As it happened, I really liked it like that – this happens in card making a lot. You have one idea and then it turns out an entirely different way that you prefer. Just go with the flow.
Then I printed Merry Christmas onto card and cut a banner shape using my Silhouette Cameo. Please note, you do not need a Silhouette Cameo – just a stanley/craft knife and a ruler will suffice.
I then cut out the wreath shape which I found on the silhouette online store. Again, if you don’t have a silhouette cameo, no problem. Just find a wreath image on the internet, print it out on green card stock and cut it out. {The picture below shows the wreath still stuck to my cutting mat which is why it doesn’t look that great}
I decided the green was a little flat, so I glittered it up using a Wink of Stella glitter brush pen. These pens are seriously amazing little things – glitter without the mess cannot be a bad thing!
I then assembled the whole thing by gluing the cream card stock to the base card, popping the wreath onto the cream card and attaching the sentiment using double sided foam tape to give it a bit of dimension. It still needed a pop of colour, so I added a red bow.
I then created a sentiment to go inside the card so I can write on it when it comes ready to send it.
And there you have it. One very easy to do, but quite lovely Christmas Card.
I hope you give it a go and if you do, please do let me know.
Much love,
I love paper craft too, Sarah! Don’t do it much these days. I am so jealous of your fancy snazzbringers! Wish I could pop over and paper craft with you for an hour or two. That would be bliss.
Thanks Rachel. I wish you could pop over and craft with me too xx