Poinsettia and Pomegranates

I recently had someone ask me to make five large (A4 size*) Christmas cards. I've never made a card that big, let alone five of them! All of the dies I have would've looked too small on the large card, so I chose to use a digi stamp and enlarged it (a lot!) to fill up the front of my card. The image I've used is from Powerpoppy called Poinsettia and Pomegranates. I used artistic licence and made my pomegranates blue instead of red :-)

Copic colours used:

Poinsettia: R89, R37, R24, R14 and R12

Poinsettia centre: Y17 and Y13

Pomegranates: B37, B34, B32 and Y17

Pomegranate leaves: YG67, YG17, YG23, YG21 with a dash of Y13 on a few leaves

Thin leaves: G29, G24 and G20

As I had to make five of these in a short amount of time they are not blended as much as I would normally colour them. Pretty much just chucked the colour on but I'm happy with how they turned out anyway :-)

I've used a black A3*, 210 gsm card as my base and then used Bazzill heavyweight cardstock for the layers to make it more stable. I added a white piece on the inside too to study up the back piece. I've added some chunky white and gold embossing frantage (I think it's called Shabby White) to the corners and inked the edges with Distress Ink Festive Berries.

The Merry Christmas is also a digi stamp from PowerPoppy 'Chickadee in Barberry' but I've just removed the "to you" part.

I also added some mini prills to the centre of the poinsettia.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

*A4 size is 210 mm x 297 mm or 8.27 x 11.69 inches; and

A3 is double the size of A4, so 420 mm x 297 mm or 16.5 x 11.7 inches.

It's nearly Christmas!

Wow! I wasn't planning on being away from my blog and cardmaking for that long (just looked at my last post and it was November 2016!) - I have been soooo busy this last year - but I guess everyone else has too.

This year I have stepped up to be the Kingdom Kids Coordinator (Sunday School for 4 - 7 year olds) at our church and teach most weeks. I've also taken on our church broadcaster (newsletter) each week and my paid work (even though I'm doing the same hours as last year) is now spread out over 4 days. We been on our "lifestyle" block for just over two years now and loving it - but it's definitely more work than being in town! But I'm loving tending to the garden (vegetables and fruit trees) and animals (we even had baby ducks this year!) - so I've been a tad busier than before and haven't found as much time for cardmaking.

I've really enjoyed teaching the little kids at our church about God and seeing them grow in their knowledge and love for Him and I've done a lot of learning and growing at the same time!

I've also done two, one day bible courses this year through the Trinity Theological College. They run some units in the South West of Western Australia through their Trinity in Town program. Earlier this year we did a unit called The Framework: Seeing the Christian Truth as a Whole and then we just finished a unit on Life in the Last Days: Revelation (still finishing off my assignment for this unit). All of the units I've done have been fantastic (I've now done 8) and it gives me a renewed sense of how awesome, majestic, wonderful and marvelous our God is - and yet, those who don't trust in Jesus, are sadly going to spend eternity away from Him. It really saddens me to see people all around me blinded to how wonderful God is. I need to keep reminding myself to take every opportunity to tell these people about Jesus and what He has done! But also to keep encouraging the Christians I fellowship with too! I am grateful to those friends who continue to encourage me! One friend recently told me about The Bible Project's website - and even though I've only watched two of their videos so far - I found it a great, if very quick, overview of the book of the bible (I watched the Revelation videos). They appear to have done videos for most (if not all?) books of the Bible - you should have a look.

But I have spent some time in my craft room this year making some cards and I wanted to share a few with you.

This is one I made for a work colleague who went on maternity leave.

Stamps by PowerPoppy, Mo Manning and Stamp-It, coloured with Copics

I entered some cards in the Brunswick Show again this year.

Dies and Paper from Our Daily Bread Designs.
This card won Second Place

This card won First place

This card won Second Place

This card got a highly commended

This card got a highly commended

This card won second prize.
I've made a card pretty much exactly the same as this one before. It was so much fun I made another one!

Altogether I won one first, four seconds and two highly commended. I also won the "trophy" for the most points in the card making section.

My children also, once again had fun making things to enter in the show. My eldest daughter won second place in the scrapbooking section.

The photos were of our first baby duckling that our pet ducks had :-) Her name is Honey.

My youngest daughter won first prize for her Christmas ornament. I was so impressed with her patience with the cutting, folding and gluing this ornament together!

Not a great photo but a lot of effort went into this one!

I'm super busy now getting ready for all the end of year things - at church, school and home! I can't believe Christmas is only three weeks away!

"Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord." 

Luke 2:11 (NIRV)

Jesus is the reason for the season!