Merry Christmas from Playing with Papercrafting!

Well, the big day is almost here! You've decorated, baked, shopped, wrapped, cleaned, partied, crafted, mailed and spent countless hours getting ready to celebrate! Hopefully, now you'll be able to relax a little and enjoy the fruits of your labours, but experience tells me that you probably won't really get to put your feet up until Christmas dinner is done. I learned to enjoy Christmas amongst the busyness and noise of the season. There have been a couple of years where it was all too quiet and I really didn't enjoy that at all, so appreciate it while you can!

Since this is my last regular post before Christmas, I want to take this opportunity to wish all my readers and customers a very Merry Christmas and to thank you for continuing to be my readers and customers over the years! I hope you all have the chance to celebrate together in peace and love this weekend!

For those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, let me wish you Happy Holidays and extend the same wish for peace and love for you and yours this season!

Let's all try to reach out to someone this season and make it brighter for them. I have a feeling that this next year may be very difficult and we're going to need to stick together and help each other rather than turn against each other. Let's start that right now in the spirit of Christmas!

Here's an illuminated easel card that I made just for this occasion using the Hearth & Home Framelits:

• I tried to come up with some wainscoting for the wall, by using the Simply Scored tool to score some Whisper White cardstock to make bead-board, but in the end, die cutting the fireplace in the middle took out most of the scored lines and also flattened them a little so it doesn't look half as cool as it did at first. However, I did rescore the lines after die-cutting, the camera just doesn't pick them up very well. This side shot will show you, though:

• I cut the flames for the fireplace freehand from scraps of Gold, Red and Pumpkin Pie Glimmer Paper. I used Fast Fuse to adhere them together and then onto the Vellum cardstock that backs the card front.
• The Hang Your Stocking Bundle has larger stockings, but I noticed that there was one stamp and one framelit of a smaller size that was just the right proportion for the Hearth & Home Thinlits. I stamped one and die cut it and then just die cut another out of cardstock and added some of the decorations from the bundle to it.
• The mantle decorations consist of evergreen branches made with my old Martha Stewart leaf punch, various holly leaves and poinsettias and trees from the Hang Your Stocking stamp set, which all have coordination dies and 1/2" Circle punched pieces of Gold and Real Red Glimmer Paper.
• The sentiments are both from the Oh What Fun stamp set in the Annual Catalogue. To see how to make an illuminated easel card, check out this tutorial!

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List

Hang Your Stocking Photopolymer Stamp Set [142114]	Hang Your Stocking Photopolymer Bundle [143512]	Oh, What Fun Photopolymer Stamp Set [140386]	Gold Glimmer Paper [133719]	Red Glimmer Paper [121790]
Pumpkin Pie Glimmer Paper [142029]	Vellum 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [101856]	Presents & Pinecones Designer Series Paper [141986]	Sahara Sand 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [121043]	Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [100730]
Emerald Envy 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [141415]	Emerald Envy Classic Stampin' Pad [141396]	Real Red Classic Stampin' Pad [126949]	1/2" Circle Punch [119869]	Simply Scored [122334]
Christmas Stockings Thinlits Dies [141841]	Hearth & Home Thinlits Dies [139666]	Stitched Shapes Framelits Dies [145372]	Layering Ovals Framelits Dies [141706]	Big Shot [143263]
Paper Snips Scissors [103579]	Liquid Multipurpose Glue [110755]	Fast Fuse Adhesive [129026]	Glue Dots [103683]	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430]

Learn to Make an Illuminated Easel Shaker Card!

Can you believe that this is the last weekend in October? And Halloween is on Monday? Where does the time go? I'm feeling anxious about starting my Christmas shopping! The big thing on my mind right now, though, is finishing my November newsletter and getting it out there this weekend. Especially because I have a really busy weekend coming up. Last Saturday, our Refugee Care Collective got together to make apple pies as a fundraiser. We made 105 pies before noon, but still had a lot of apples left, so we're doing the same thing this Saturday! They're $10 each and really yummy for those of you who live nearby and want in on it.

                               

                                  The pies are frozen with baking instructions on the label.

On Sunday, I'm rehearsing a Christmas play with the Sunday School kids that we will be presenting on December 11th. There isn't much time to get it together when we can only rehearse on Sundays, so that's a bit scary! And I'm helping with an Alpha course Sunday night!

So with all that going on, it's not leaving a lot of time left over for the newsletter! I do have the Free Photo Tutorial planned however. As you know, if you subscribe to my newsletter, each month I offer a free photo tutorial with step-by-step instructions for making a papercrafting project, and this month, I will be showing you how to create this beautiful Illuminated Easel card that is also a shaker card.

Although the card folds flat for mailing, you can prop it up as shown and put a little battery powered votive candle in behind the front and it will shine through the window with the wreath on it. You can just see some trees in the distance behind the sequin snow that "falls" when you tip the card. The window makes use of the antique-looking Fabulous Foil Designer Acetate which is sturdier and easier to use than Window sheets. The walls and carpet are from the Presents & Pinecones Designer Series Paper, while the window is created with the Hearth and Home Framelits.

The free Photo Tutorial includes a list of supplies and measurements as well, including how to order them if needed.

If you're not a subscriber to my newsletter, but would like to get this free tutorial, it's easy to subscribe today by entering your email address to the link below and clicking GO. You may unsubscribe at any time without difficulty.

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Happy Home for The Paper Players

The next installment in my plan to use some of my uninked stamp sets comes with the stamp set Happy Home, from the Occasions Catalogue. I remember being overjoyed when I saw that we had a Hearth and Home window thinlits in the Holiday Catalogue and I had lots of fun with it, I was excited when it was carried over into the Occasions Catalogue, but I didn't really take much of a look at the new stamp set that went with it in the Occasions cattie. But I still like that window framelit and I want to use it more so, decided to get out Happy Home and take it for a spin. It was also the perfect image to use for The Paper Player's latest challenge, a colour swatch:

Perfect!! Sky, grass, blossoms and flowers - great for a scene viewed through a window.

• The idea behind this card is that you're in a house, looking outside through a window at a spring tree in full bloom. I sponged the sky and grass areas in Soft Sky and Mossy Meadow ink, using a bit of a mask for clean transistions between the two.
• Without realizing it until I put up the window frame, the tree was right smack in the middle where the center piece of the window frame lies. If I had tried ahead of time, I might have moved the tree slightly to the left of center so more of the trunk could be seen.
• I used a Melon Mambo Stampin' Write Marker for the blossoms on the tree, Pumpkin Pie for the bench and the flowers on the ground and Early Espresso as a neutral on the trunk.
• Two things that are really hard to see in these photos is the beadboard like embossing on the Whisper White below the chair rail on the wall and the clear window sheet behind the frame to make panes on the windows. You can maybe see them a bit in the following photo:

• I made the beadboard embossing using the Stylish Stripes Embossing folder and turning my small piece of Whisper White in it until the stripes were vertical, not on the diagonal.
• The sentiment is from the Circle of Spring stamp set and it fit within the cool stamp and coordinated label die cut from the Rose Wonder Bundle. I cut another label die cut in Mossy Meadow in half and added it to the back of the sentiment, extending each side beyond the edge just slightly.

This card reminds me of what I can see at this time of year out my back windows: 

Our nectarine tree above and our cherry tree on the right, gearing up for another bumper crop!!

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List

Happy Home Wood-Mount Stamp Set [140500]	Happy Home Clear-Mount Stamp Set [140503]	Happy Home Wood-Mount Bundle [140806]	Happy Home Clear-Mount Bundle [140805]	Circle Of Spring Photopolymer Stamp Set [138964]
Rose Wonder Photopolymer Stamp Set [140697]	Rose Wonder Photopolymer Bundle [140804]	Window Sheets Base Material [114323]	Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [100730]	Early Espresso 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [119686]
Soft Sky Classic Stampin' Pad [131181]	Mossy Meadow Classic Stampin' Pad [133645]	Pumpkin Pie Classic Stampin' Pad [126945]	Brights Stampin' Write Markers [131259]	Neutrals Stampin' Write Markers [131261]
Stamping Sponges [141337]	Stylish Stripes Textured Impressions Embossing Folder [132174]	Woodgrain Textured Impressions Embossing Folder [127821]	Hearth & Home Thinlits Dies [139666]	Rose Garden Thinlits Dies [140619]
Big Shot [113439]	Liquid Multipurpose Glue [110755]	Fast Fuse Adhesive [129026]	Glue Dots [103683]	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430]