Notes for the Holiday

Making note cards for gifts were among the creative tasks keeping me busy this week. I thought I'd share two sets with you today. One carries a wintery theme with it and the other a bright spring. One was wholly my own idea, while the Thistle Garden was one I saw at our Spring Stamp show in 2011...yes, I've intended to do this that long! They were to be a gift for my Mum last year, and never found time to do them, so this year I was determined! One thing holding me back was the fact that I do not own the Copic Markers. I had planned to buy the colors one by one to do the card as I had viewed the sample of it at the Impression Obsession booth. However, as most of you know, they are a bit pricey. Then I found at our local Pat Catan's Craft stores their brand of alcohol based markers, very similar, but very economical. They come in a mixed set of six markers in color families of greens, turquoises, and purples but a set of six can be obtained for about the price of two Copic Markers (maybe even less). They are known as Spectrum Noir Alcohol Markers and you can see their full color range here.  and if you don't have a  Pat Catan's in your area, you can still visit at Consumer Crafts and order on line. In fact sign up for their newsletter and you can keep track of their sales, I added a few more sets to my simple collection at Thanksgiving when their already low online price was cut even further by 40%.  However, back to the notes...

The second note was a spur of the moment thing. I saw the stamp on a recent shopping trip and thought of how much it would please my Mum, who loves cardinals. I'd been toying with buying a punch to make her a card with a cardinal, but I'm happy this came along, but now the pressure was on to complete another set of cards in time for gift giving.  This stamp by Susan Winget for Inkadinkado let me bring out the Twinkling H2O's to play around and have fun.

 

The camera angle is catching the golden glimmer of the watercolors a little more than I care for, so may need to re-shoot it.

 

Well, that's my offering for today...have to hurry back to a painting I'm working on for my granddaughter's bedroom for Christmas...it just might make it up here in a day or two!

 

take care, have a wonderful Christmas,

thanks for stopping by...

 

andrea