Simple Christmas cards

Like a lot of people, we're on a tight budget this Christmas. In addition to shortening my Christmas card recipient list, i've also been working on some simply designed cards. They're easier to make, less time-consuming, and without the addition of a lot of bulk, they're cheaper to send. Here's a few recent ones:

Ingredients: CS - Kraft, stash; PP - unknown; stamps - Martha Stewart Christmas Tree Stamps; ink - Versafine; snowflake punch; pop-dots.

Ingredients: see above.

i think my dad may be getting this one.

Ingredients: CS - Kraft, stash; stamps - Martha Stewart Christmas Tree Stamps, Limited Edition Distressed Background, Fancy Pants Simply Stated, Papertrey Ink Mixed Messages; ink - Pallette Hybrid, Ranger Distress; pop-dots.

So, your frugal tip for today is make simpler cards! This is especially helpful at the holidays when we're all short on time, need to make lots of cards and can always stand to save some money.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Frugal Crafter and a few Christmas cards...

So, today's frugal tip concerns embellishments. Available today is a huge variety of embellishments for your paper-crafting needs. i sometimes buy these pre-made embellishments for special projects, but whenever i can i make my own using stamps and/or punches. i find it's not cost-effective to buy an embellishment i use frequently, such as flowers, in every color i would need. i make exceptions for those lovely velvet and felt flowers, but for paper i just buy a few varieties of punches to make my own in any color or type of paper/CS i choose.

For this card, i punched snowflakes for embellies and added paper ribbon, another cost-saving technique. Awhile back i purchased a set of ribbon/lace stamps, knowing that they'd pay for themselves very quickly.

Ingredients: CS - stash, Bazzill; stamps - Martha Stewart Clear Pattern Stamps, Autumn Leaves Freestyle Alphabet, Art Warehouse Ribbons and Lace, small snowflake (unknown); ink - Pallette Hybrid, Versamagic; brads - MM.

This card has more homemade snowflake embellishments - this time i added eyelets and some gold Stickles for bling.

Ingredients: CS - stash, Bazzill; stamps - Sassafras Lass Stunning Spirals, Martha Stewart Christmas Tree Stamps, Studio G; ink - Versamagic, Pallette Hybrid, Colorbox Chalk; eyelets - MM; Stickles; pop-dots.

And one more... For this one, i added stamped ribbon to cut down on bulk and keep things simple.

Ingredients: CS - stash; PP - My Mind's Eye; stamps - Martha Stewart Christmas Tree Stamps, Papertrey Ink Take a Bough; ink - Pallette Hybrid; Stickles.

Most of you long-time crafters know these tips already, but hopefully someone reading this will discover a new idea.

Thanks for stopping by, and i hope you're all having an inspired day!

Autumn cards...

Hi, everyone! i'm finally back online after a couple months with no computer. While trying to add a new video card to our old rig, the mother board was basically fried. A friend of ours with more computer know-how than us built us a new setup, much better than our previous one. We're still limited by dial-up, but i'm just happy to be up and running again!
i've got a lot of catching up to do, not only on my own blog but also looking at what my favorite bloggers have been up to for the past two months.
Tonight i'm sharing a couple of Autumn cards i made back in September.

Ingredients: CS - stash; stamps - Inkadinkado Autumn Foliage and Travel Time (script), Autumn Leaves Swirls V.1; ink - Pallette Hybrid, Versamark; Prismacolor pencils; OMS; ribbon - stash; chalk; pop-dots.

Ingredients: CS - stash; PP - Basic Grey; stamps - Inkadinkado Autumn Foliage, Art Warehouse Ribbons and Lace; ink - Pallette Hybrid, Versamagic; Prismacolor pencils; OMS; brads - MM.

Thanks for looking! i'll be back soon with some of the Christmas cards i've been working on. i haven't had time lately to create very often, but hopefully things will calm down soon so i can get back into the groove!

Hope you all have a wonderful day!