It’s been a long, long time since I last got the HM stamps out but the time was right and I was inspired by the current challenge at House Mouse & Friends to Prepare For Christmas.  I also have one or two special cards to make for close family members so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to get at least one “special” card out of the way.

I’ve been thinking of making a card cum folded gift bag, the kind that might hold cookies or treats, but make it large enough to be the card as well as the gift bag.  It took a bit of planning as treat bags are normally quite small, but I wanted the front face of the card to be 6″ tall so I would have enough room for a largish image and whatever embellishments I decided on.  So in the end, my card/bag turned out to be 5 1/2″ wide and 18″ long before scoring, which gave me a big problem as both my trimmer and scoring board are sized at 12″ x 12″.  The trimmer was the biggest issue so I ended up getting my husband to cut the card for me in the basement, on a solid surface with a scalpel and one of his 48″ steel rulers!  I was able to score the piece by folding up the parts already scored to get the rest of the card on the score board!  It was too much maths for my little brain I can tell you, so after the card blank was made I went and laid down in a darkened room for a couple of days!

This is the card from the front.

And this is the side view so you can see the fold.

I’m still working on getting it to stand up totally straight!!  For the base I used Canson Artists Charcoal card in Kimono Red as it’s quite thick and stronger than regular stamping card, plus it comes in large sheets and I needed the length.

I then ran the top edge that folds over, through the Cuttlebug with a Spellbinders Label Eight die to get the shaped edge.

I cut a piece of glittered paper from the SEI Berry Melody pack to the correct width before also putting it through the Bug with a smaller Label Eight die to get the matching shape.  It was then trimmed to size, edged with DI Barn Door and stuck in place.  The other DP is from an old DCWV stack and it was also edged with the Barn Door ink, and there’s a corresponding piece on the inside too.

So when you open up the front flap this is what you see.

The sentiment was generated on the computer and cut out with a Memory Box Die, I also cut another die out of the red card stock and offset them slightly to get this ghosted effect.

The sweet little image, is of course, House Mouse Candy Gram.

I coloured it with Distress Inks, but used markers for the candy canes to keep the striped edges crisp.  It was also cut out with a Label Eight Die to keep the theme going and I edged it with Frosted White Stickles.  And it seems that while these two have “acquired” their candy cane gifts, the real gift here is obviously each other.

When you drop the front face down this is the inside with the greeting and space to write your message.

I created the greeting on the computer again, cut it out with the Label Eight  and popped it on the DCWV snowflake paper.  The final thing to do was to decide on the embellishment for the outside and this probably took the longest part of the whole process.  My desk is currently littered with various die cut and punched leaves in various shades of pink, red and white, along with numerous snowflakes and punched flowers too.

I finally decided on a Sizzix Leaf Branch Die cut from glittered card, edged in DI Barn Door, and a large snowflake embellishment made up of two large and one small Martha Stewart punches, Crystal Stickles and a lovely pink, faceted heart embellishment .

All I need to do now is to package some treats or cookies in a little glassine bag and fix it to the inside.  The recipient can then remove the treat and still have something that looks like a card to put on display.

That was quite a marathon post!  It’s taken me as long to write this up as it did to make the card, lol!  Well, not quite.

Card Recipe:

  • Card: Canson Artist’s Charcoal Card ~ The Paper Company ~ Recollections Glitter Card
  • DP: SEI Berry Melody ~ DCWV Tis The Season Stack
  • Stamp: House Mouse Candy Gram
  • Ink: Versafine Black ~ Distress Ink Barn Door, Antique Linen, Vintage Photo, Frayed Burlap & Iced Spruce
  • Embellies: Crystal & Frosted Lace Stickles ~  Heart from Paradise Scrapbooking Store ~ Marvy Marker in Scarlet ~ Recollections White Gel Pen
  • Tools: Martha Stewart Score Board, Himalayan & Glacial Snowflake Punches ~ Cuttlebug ~ Spellbinder Labels Eight Dies ~ Sizzix Leaf Die ~ Memory Box Essex Label Die ~ Computer

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Challenges:

House Mouse & Friends Monday Challenge ~ Prepare For Christmas

Penny Black & More @ Allsorts ~ Any Die Will Do

Sparkles Christmas Challenge ~ Contemporary Colours

Christmas Cards All Year Round ~ Shaped or Fancy Folds

ABC Christmas Challenge ~ W for Wrapping (I made a treat bag, hop this is OK)

Pixie’s Crafty Snippets Challenge ~ Use Up Your Scraps (everything apart from the pink snowflake paper was out of the snippets drawer.  Technically the red artist’s card wasn’t in the snippets drawer as it’s too big, but it had previously been cut in to!)