Bildmalarna Christmas 2013

Bildmalarna stamps are so cute, so I used a few for holiday cards this year. 

The first one here was sent to Claire E.  I used some of the Flower Soft that Claire sent me for the greenery around the advent candles and added a little glaze and fake snow to the candles themselves.

For Terrie R.:

For Fiorella C.:

For Dorthy C. and Angela B.:

Just received my latest order of Bildmalarna's and I'm anxious to get to the crafting table and give them a try -- but it will probably have to wait until after Christmas now.  Here's hoping your crafting table is filled with holiday goodies!!

Bildmalarna

Christmas Bulbs

Of the 103 cards that I sent out this holiday season, I actually managed to make 72 of them -- and remembered to take pictures of most. A record number for me on all accounts! Things that I learned while trying to mass produce cards, but still keep it personal with a variety are: 1). Use a simple template for the basic card designs. (Easy for me, since that is my style anyway.). 2). Make more than one card from each stamp. In this case, 4 seemed to be the magic number. What I did was look at my list of recipients and pick who I thought was best represented by the stamp; it seems in most cases I found four. 3). Color each stamped image from that one stamp the same. This makes the coloring go faster. It also makes the card making go faster, because I could use the same designer paper for all of the cards in that set. Choosing what papers to use is the most time consuming part of card making for me, so this really saved time in that way. And those are the "mass production" lessons I learned this holiday season. My other goal was to master the one embellishment dilemma. I think I also managed that -- the keys being having the right embellishment and the right card lay out.

This Bildmalarna image is called "Mimosa Christmas Tree." The sentiment is from Penny Black. The embellishments are K & Co. and rhinestones. The papers are from Bazzill, K & Co. and DCWV. It was colored with Copics. Metallic pen was added. And the Christmas balls are covered in liquid glass. Little Mimosa went out to my mother, Julie, Mary Beth, Eugena and Claudia P.

Straw Horses for Christmas

It rather surprised me that this little straw horse image from Bildmalarna ended up being one of my favorites this Christmas season; it didn't seem that it was necessarily my usual style. The name of the stamp is "Mimosa with Straw Buck."

The more I colored on it with my Copics the more I liked it, so I actually ended up making 5 cards like this one:

The papers were from DCWV and Bazzill. The heat embossed sentiment was from Stamp Affair. The little corner bow embellishment was from K & Co. These 5 cards were sent out to Claire E. (Ace Extraordinaire), Marie S., Michelle R., Jane and Chris, and Uncle Duane and Aunt Troy. After making these 5, I tried one more in blue for Althea S.:

(The corner snowflake embellishment is from The Paper Studio on this one.) After making this one, I had to force myself to move on to another stamp. Oh well, there is always next year to make more!

Bildmalarna Cards

Here are some of the cards that I sent using Bildmalarna stamps. For Ace:

For Mel:

The mail service in the section of South Africa that I sent this card to is so "spotty" that I don't think Petra has ever received this card. Maybe the mail handlers are critics and decided that this card was too crooked for such a honey and fed it to the wildlife. Who knows? I just hope there were no bellyaches involved.

Bildmalarna Monochromatic

This little 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 card is done all in cardstock (my fav), no designer papers, please. The image is from Bildmalarna. The verse from a House Mouse and Friends set by Stampabilities (I've seen this verse around a lot lately). The inside includes a quote from Samuel Butler, "How dear to this heart are the scenes from my childhood." The disappointing part of this simple card is the paper that the image was stamped on. I tried some new paper and I am just not happy with it. The image isn't as blotchy as the scanner makes it look, but it wouldn't hold up to close scrutiny either. Ahh, well...