 Hi there, it's Sandy, and today I want to go over the Christmas cards that were sent in for my holiday inspiration challenge because I asked you to send in cards that will inspire my holiday cards this year, and I'm going to be using a number of these as jumping off points for some of my designs. And I'm looking forward to trying that and seeing how that works. I am going to be taking an individual picture of each one of these cards if you want to look at them closer and posting that on my blog along with a very short description of how they did it. I'm not going to type out everything that was put onto their forms that they sent in with their cards, and I'll see if I can find links to some of the supplies. If I can, they'll be there. They won't be in the doobly-doo under the video because that's a lot of work. All right, let's get started. I began by putting all of the different cards into categories. I was trying to figure out how to divide this video, so I sorted them into roughly the kinds of categories that I thought might work. So our first category is berries and tree branches. This one is by Alina, and she's made a window card with some acetate in the window. And that protects the image, but you could also put shaker bits in there if you wish. There's embossing on this outside panel, and the sentiment is surrounded by these beautifully little trimmed-out pieces of holly. And that could either be a really tight die cut, which I'm not really sure there are dies that quite go that tight. So it might be fussy cutting, which is astounding if you did that kind of beautiful fussy cutting. Great job. But this one I thought would be nice for a small shaker element on a Christmas card, so you don't end up having to buy a ton of shaker bits, but you could still make some mass production shaker cards. And is a card by Cindy, and she's got birds with little branches of holly or cherries or berries or some such. And this one I'm going to make the wild guess that this has been colored in water-based pens. The reason is because of the types of lines that you get around the edges and the types of overlay from two different colors of red or two layers of the same red. There's also some pencil for shading underneath of this, so I think this qualifies as a mixed media card. Very simple and beautiful, and that would be easy to mass produce as well. Andrea made one that was stamped using some Tombow markers, and then she did some spritzing and various types of things to create this kind of a look. So she's got some light greens and dark greens, so she stamped part of it with light green, and then stamped in the dark green and did some spritzing to make that look watercolor-ish. So the next category, this moves us into that, is watercolor, watercolor pencils, and watercolor markers. We're going to start off with another one with watercolor markers, and this one is by Debbie, and she's done some art impressions stamping. And if you have not seen art impressions stamps, you'll want to. This church has some lovely windows in it, and she's put some reflections of the light or shining yellow light going out onto the snow, which is beautiful. And I love the color scheme she's got going in here. This would also be a really nice sketch to follow if you're looking for something really easy. You could die cut a whole bunch of circles and then put scenes or whatever your element is in them on a series of Christmas cards. This one is by Beth, and kind of blew my mind with something she said in her description, which is that background, that sky. You're not going to believe what she did that with. She didn't have any salts to use for it, so she used perfect pearls to make that sky look like it does. So try different supplies that you have, and see how they mix with your watercolors and how they move it, and you might discover something really amazing like that. Next is this little treasure of beauty by Inga, and I love the softness of it. I like the fact that these browns go nicely with the brown card base, and it's done in watercolors, but I'm also going to maybe even wonder if there's some watercolor pens in here that some of that was stamped with, and I will be reading the directions that they gave me. Lots of people wrote essays, and I didn't memorize them all, so I will try to give you more information on the blog about each one of these, but I think that was really pretty. She's even got some shimmer up here on the fire, and Shirley provided a beautiful card. This would be another one, great mass production, because she's got just watercolor around it and a single stamp with a die-cut sentiment. Something to point out here is that she was not afraid to put some color in the snow. A lot of people would just leave the snow white, but when you're looking at a night scene with snow, you often will see a color sheen across the snow. You might see it sum across the roofs, but the roofs will pick up more of the moonlight sometimes, and putting color down here makes sure that the focus is driven up to the snow on the buildings themselves. No one would guess that because this is green, that that was not snow. You wouldn't ever assume that. So pretty, pretty card. And here is one from Karen. I believe this is watercolor pencil, and she's colored a really cute image and created her own trees in order to make a scene. Love the harmony with the colors. She's got lots of blues and greens, and then blue-green paper out here as well. And it's an oversized card, so don't forget you can always go bigger if you have a nice big image like this one. Next I picked out a few that I think would be good for sketches or sketch ideas, and this one is one that Tammy sent in, and she said she hadn't finished it yet. She's thinking maybe she will finally finish it. She found this in her stash. And I was thinking that a cascade of images across the card could work really nicely. This one also has some shimmer. So she's got some little motion going on with the snowflakes. But I've already got an idea for a stamp set that I have in the house that this one might be a sketch type of inspiration for. And if I end up making sketches out of any of these or following them for sketches, I'll create an actual sketch that you can use. But just consider small images that you have that could spill out across a card. This is another one that I think would be a good sketch. This is by Sherry, and it's not stunning. It's got some gold embossing here. But she used Copics in order to make these flowers. I think she probably stamped them in a no-line fashion, made some darker shadows with Copics, and then used a little bit of white to make some of the areas pop. And there's lots of poinsettia stamps that come out during the holiday season. So putting one on one side and one on the other, they're different stamps. So you can see they were handled differently here. You could use a smaller one and a larger one. You could turn them different directions, so it just doesn't look like a replica. But having two corners of them with a sentiment just makes for a beautiful and very nice design that I might well be stealing and submitted one that I thought also would be an excellent sketch, because we have lots of trees all the time in stamp sets for the holidays. And making the tree trunks into words is kind of a cool idea. I'm pretty sure that was part of the stamp set that she used here. But you could create that with all different kinds of things. You could even cut triangles to make your own trees to create a card like that. And that's one that I think I might be using as well. I'll have sent in a multi-layered card, which is another great idea. You can use a lot of different kinds of papers together, lots of different kinds of elements. Make sure that what she did here, she used white on top of something that will separate it from the busyness of this background paper. You always have to be careful when you're using busy backgrounds that it doesn't make your words unreadable. So having the white clouds along with the vellum that she's got dulling down some of the strong color in here helps to let it snow-readable. And another one that is in a similar design style, it's got just rectangles with layers on it. This one just in a very different style. It's got images in it instead. But it's the same kind of an idea, just having a large rectangle with smaller and smaller ones. Here she's got the focal point down in the lower right, which I love focal points that are not dead centered. So the combination of the sentiment and the rays radiating out from the major are lovely. And then she's got something breaking up that centrality down here by adding another element to it. And beautiful Copic colored images. Next are some that I'm gonna call scene cards. You know how much I love scenes. And this one is from Karen. And she's created a beautiful background. And I love the idea of a spattered sky with the snow in it instead of having to worry so much about making little snow dots like I do with my white pen. It might be faster to do some spattering and get that kind of a look. And then she's got her images in the foreground with some die-cut hill sides. Linda sent one in and she even noted that even though there's a stamp that has this whole door in it, you could actually make your own door and just cut out some different rectangles. And I thought that would be really fun to try at some point. She's got lots of images in here. She made her own die-cut parts for the wreath and stuff. Just lots of fun elements on this one. And finally in scenes is Rhonda's card where it's a slimline card. It doesn't hardly fit on my screen here. But she's used the Anita Jerome stamp set from Colorado Craft Company. She's added her own snow on top of some of these elements and added a banner of hollywood leaves and things. And this has actually on some of the dangly bits, I think glossy accents or some such that's giving them a little bit of dimension to them. And then snow down here at the bottom, which just looks very realistic. And the cat wanting to get in because dang it, there's snow. My cat would totally be doing that. Next up we have the people category and this one is from Elaine. And she's got it on an MFT swing element. It's this little thing that makes a card swing. There's also dies that will make things swing. And I will try to link you to some of those elements if I can over on the blog. And it's got some really nice foil on the ornament itself. And one heck of a job fussy cutting out this entire bit. I mean that's just crazy and wacky and wonderful and I absolutely love it. Fabulous job, Elaine. And next is another slimline card. This one is from Carrie. And she's done some Copic coloring on the person. Beautiful job on that. She's created a scene in the background and that appears to be watercolor back there. And some shimmery paper for the snow itself with a border around the whole thing. So she's got lots of elements going on here and the coloring especially is a lot of fun. Hailey is one of my youngest followers and I love seeing her work all the time. She tried doing something really interesting to make some magical dust using some of the neon markers, the fluorescent markers from Copic, as well as some white pen, et cetera to create a little bit of magic. And I think it's really stunning that she created this look where she got the glow on the front of the character and everything else just starts to get darker. And she wrote herself a whole critique of it but I think it's absolutely gorgeous and I might have to try that myself. This card is from Beata. I hope I'm saying your name right but it's got three girls from different MFT sets. And my favorite thing about this is the colorway. It's so playful and so bright and I think I need to try that on one of my cards because I usually go with stuff that's a little more on the traditional side but this is really just happy, happy colors. They're all colored beautifully and die cut out nicely. Gorgeous, gorgeous job on that one. Carol made a watercolor card and one of the things that I like about this is that you can focus all your coloring on the image itself and just let there be some sky in the background. When you're talking about winter cards, a lot of the scenes can be very, very white and you can have a very simple element, a very simple sentiment or something. She's even added a snowflake out there that can keep it really easy and quick to get a bunch done. Maybe not mass manufacturing, mass production but you could definitely do a lot with it. Kelly sent in this one and it isn't a Christmas card but could be quite easily because it's still got red and white. All you'd have to do is change the sentiment to something holiday-ish but I love this little girl. She's so cute and it's colored in colored pencil and it's especially beautiful colored pencil work. I love all of the dry colored pencil blending instead of always lots of us feel the need to try to make it look like Copic and use blending solution. I just love the look of dry blending on colored pencil cards. The next category is dies and I don't use a lot of dies. I don't own a lot of dies but my friend Esther always makes lots of beautiful cards and this one has a gorgeous round die to use in mass production form. This would be really easy to do and assemble with a group. She works with a lot of seniors I know a lot of times to make cards and things like this. It's very easy to just align everything and get it to make a bunch of cards all at once real easily especially with people who don't have a lot of experience in card making. Nikki did something that I thought was fabulous. She stretched herself beyond what she normally does and she ended up making a scene in the background with just colored pencils and that's pretty amazing for just colored pencil work and then she has, from what I can gather she has fussy cut out this cross and I put it in die cutting because it's better than die cutting. It is done absolutely perfectly. I am jealous of your ability to die cut my dear. That was really beautiful. Betty's card does not look like a die cut card does it? Well let's open it and see the treat that is inside. She has an inner layer and on the inner layer she's just cut lines in three places to make the three gifts and then the score in the middle folds up and then each one of these is scored on the edge and she covered them with paper and then with the rickrack. Really nice homemade kind of design and look how that pops out. You get some dimension with it. Very cute idea. Nice paper engineering. Now we saw another window card from Alina earlier. She was the one that had that first card. This one does not have any acetate in it but instead it's got the characters in it and she uses all kinds of equipment for her die cutting that I don't have. I'm not a cricket user but she's got some beautiful trees and they're all shimmerized and gorgeous and it is a giant card. Love it, love it, love it. This next category I'm also going to be calling shimmer. There's lots of shimmery stuff that we use along during the Christmas season and she has done watercolor in the background. She's got some beautiful shine in the snow and on the wing and on the branch and she's also like me, hopefully not because of me. I hate to enable people too much but gotten into wax seals and I think that's a very pretty card, pretty use of all of those different kinds of elements together. There's a second card from Inga and she's done some beautiful die cutting here so that could have been in the die cut category but I was fascinated with this. There's a product she used, I don't remember the name of it right now, I will link it on the blog that created that shine because she did some inking and stuff to make the background first and then sprayed it and I need whatever that is because that is pretty spectacularly shiny and yummy. And this is a card from our lone male submitter, Nick. Thanks for joining in on the fun. He used a lacquer pen for these dots on here and I had never heard of a lacquer pen. I'm thinking I might be able to do the same kind of thing with my glossy accents if only I had a stamp like that so we're gonna see if somebody comes out with a stamp that I can do this kind of thing with. It feels really cool. It's got all this beautiful lumpiness to it and then also in two threesomes and I always say if you're gonna add elements like this add them in an odd number and so the two threesomes of embellishing, Primo, well done. Even one little single one down there all by itself. Beautiful shimmer and shine. Nancy sent in a card that has me thinking I might need to go see if I still have my jelly plate. She used acrylic paints to make this jelly plate background and I don't even know if I still have it. I haven't seen it in ages but I absolutely love that look of all of that. I might find some other techniques for using paints that way because these colors together are so gorgeous and soft. I think that makes for a beautiful background and then she's got all the shimmery embossing powder on here as well. Kelly sent in this card that has beautiful shimmer on it as well so you can see how twinkly, twinkly, twinkly in all kinds of aspects that one is but her card was also a reminder to me not to forget the outside of the card. Now these are not the same stamp. There might be a same set possibly that she worked with for that. Some of this looks hand drawn on here which is really amazing if that is but don't forget the outside of your envelopes as well because if you can find something simple to do it's a great addition to tell your recipient that they are not getting a bill, they're getting a Christmas card. The last one that I wanted to share with you is from Katie in Kansas City. This is I think not part of the submissions to everything but I was so blessed by this that I had to share it. So she wrote a little personal note about how she has seen Jesus better through me which is super sweet to hear but I want you to see what she did. This is so cool. She said, I use the Arteza ever blend art markers, love them and she drew the markers out here, isn't that fun? I just think that's really cool and the card that she made is I think I might end up having to make one of these that has a match book latch. So she has two of these brads on it and then put this, oops, put this on the inside thinking if he makes me smile. I think that's one of the lucky cat stamps that I used earlier this year. Isn't that sweet? So I don't think that was part of the Christmas submission but the closure on this, I think I might need to use and adapt. So thank you for that, Katie. So thanks so much to everybody who sent in cards for my card drive. I am excited to have all this Christmas inspiration to get me rolling on my holiday cards this season especially since I am so hot today. While I'm filming this, it is actually 88 degrees inside in my studio right now. So we don't have air conditioning here. Yeah, this is supposed to be at least a short lived heat wave crossing my fingers. I will see you guys very soon with another video. You know how that goes. Make sure you're subscribed and I'll see you later. Bye.