Carving for fun and profit: Christmas cards

Every year, one of my favourite things to do in advance of the holidays is write and send out Christmas cards. Every year, I go to Chapters or some other shop and find a cute set of cards, then send those out along with that year's Canada Post holiday stamp (postage stamp, not holiday stamp).

This year, instead of buying what are, quite frankly,  soul-less commercially produced cards, I decided to make my own.  I can carve - so why not make my own?

So, armed with some white (and a few black) card blanks I got on sale from Michael's, I sat and had a think as to what I could carve up to make cards with.  Unfortunately, this thinking process took way too long (ahem, weeks), and before I knew it, crunch time was upon me... The good news is I had come up with an idea: draw and carve a simple background of birch trees I could stamp in silver, then draw and carve a few tiny cardinals to stamp into the trees.

I drew away and came up with a nice block stamp for the background birches (using up some left over pesky Speedball Speedy Cut that you should absolutely stay away from using - crumbly terrible stuff) as well as some cute little cardinals in different poses.  As I didn't have a lot of time, I picked up some stamps with words like "Merry Christmas", "Seasons Greeting", and "Joy" on them... I know, you can't believe I actually bought stamps instead of carving them... I hang my head in shame... Once this initial carving was done, the rest of the process flew... Cards all stamped up, I decided to put some finishing touches on in the form of some nice red sparklies on the birds' wings.

The vast majority I did with the red and silver.  But I also did about a half dozen in the blue and gold and two with just the silver birches on black. Each of the cards is different, given what is stamped outside and in and where the birds are in the trees.  I think I will definitely be doing this again next year.

The girls I was making cards with that day loved watching me carve the stamps I then used, so after I finished stamping, I gave them away...