Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!! I'm going to start the New Year off with some posts about the most recent cards and scrap book pages I've made.

Christmas is a time of wonderful memories, traditions, decorations, food, and ... GIFTS. The pre-holiday days are filled with shopping and gift-wrapping, the post-holiday days are time time to say "Thank You". Although email has largely replaced handwritten notes (my grandmother would turn over in her grave at the thought), you may want to make some cards for a more personal holiday thank you to the special people in your life.

This week’s challenge at Mothers and Daughters Creations is to make Thank You cards. While I love to labor over T-Y cards as much as any other, if you need many cards to send out after the holidays, you need to keep them simple and quick or you could still be writing thank you notes at the beach! (I don’t think that’s what they mean when they talk about “Christmas in July”.)

I made a pair of quick and easy “Thank You” cards using a wonderful paper from Melissa Frances. “Gracie” is a winter themed paper in non-traditional colors – gray, a very subtle sage green, and a touch of lavender… one of my favorite color combinations. The colors in “Gracie” are very subtle: the olive is more gray than olive, and the lavender is mostly found in the distressing. But it’s an effective way to add color and the same color matting brings your eye to it immediately.

I used Core’Dinations card stock for the color base and matted my greeting in the same card stock. I love Core’Dinations, especially the Nostalgia collection. The colors are just the right shades to go with most vintage patterned prints, and they include gradients of each color in each pack. That makes monochromatic mats a breeze. They’re on sale now at MDC: http://www.mothersdaughterscreations.citymax.com/CoreDinations_CardStock.html

The greeting is from the Snag’em Stamps by Imaginisce – most of these stamps are only a dollar. (Here’s a link to the entire collection of them at MDC: http://www.mothersdaughterscreations.citymax.com/Imaginisce_Stamps.html) I painted the flower on the greeting with water color pencils adding just a hint of lavender and olive.



I used Martha Stewart lace edge punches to add some elegance and chose two completely different style ribbons. For the more sophisticated card matted in gray, I paired a more formal lace edge with a gray satin ribbon. For the card with the more flowery lace edge, I used a wispy wired edge organza, a bargain at MDC as well for ribbon this wide. You can see it here: http://www.mothersdaughterscreations.citymax.com/catalog/item/6622142/6489103.htm

The finishing touch is a row of dew drops. I was wishing I had them in the right shade of lavender but decided that clear added just the right touch without taking away from the gorgeous paper.

If you need to make some holiday thank you’s, visit the blog at MDC for some more absolutely stunning ideas and submit your cards to this weeks’ challenge! (Here’s a link to the blog: http://mdcchallenges.blogspot.com)