My sister is doing Christmas with the “other side” of her family this year as well as attending her husband’s brother’s wedding yesterday. This means that she’s staying in the UK whilst the rest of the family is in the US so she sent us Christmas cards. I had had a preview of them, or similar ones, on skype but it’s not the same as seeing the cards in person. She was happy for me to share her cards on my blog – she has a blog too (although life has been getting in the way a bit lately including making 90 or so Christmas cards!) so do stop over and check out her work.

The card is 8.5″ by 3″ which makes me realise that almost every card I make is the same size. I’ll have to take a tip from my sister and try some other sizes. The base is real red with a matting of garden green. She used the wreath hanger from Wondrous Wreath with gold encore ink to create the hangers for the ornaments. Then she used the (sadly retired) ornament punch to cut out a variety of festive papers. These are all retired ones too – when we were at the weekend crop last month there were little packets of a few sheets of DSP and we both couldn’t resist. I think this is a great use of the papers. The sentiment is from the Good Greetings set which was added to the clearance rack today. I’m sad that it’s being discontinued because it’s an incredibly useful set and probably worth snapping up if you don’t already have it.

Caro also sent a card here for our parents and I’m impressed to see that she’s managed to create a card with – as well as part with – the snowflake ornaments (also now on the clearance rack). Mine get taken out of the container, looked at and put back!

I would never think to use early espresso as a base for a Christmas card but I think it works beautifully. Yet another tip to take from Caro. 🙂 This is another “odd” sized card; it’s a 4 inch square. The background is the All is Calm DSP which is a fabulous collection of papers. She’s threaded the All is Calm snowflake embellishment onto the lost lagoon silky taffeta ribbon – apparently this was quite a feat, cutting the ribbon on an angle helps, but it’s not a quick thing to do.