Twelve Crafters Crafting (Part 1)

OK, first of all, "thanks" (kind of …) to Jackie of the marvellous Funky Hand design team for this month's challenge. As if crafters didn't have enough to do at this time of year with making cards (due to some mid-winter festive event being just thirty four sleeps away … and, more pressingly, the last posting date for Australia only two weeks hence), this month's challenge wants us to present two projects. To be fair, I did make big early in-roads into my Christmas cards in January this year, when inspiration struck. Although they're not finished, I'm still happy with them and think (hope!) it shouldn't take too long to get them ready for posting. There are a few other designs that I'd like to try out … and I don't think I'll be able to resist and keep them for 2012! Must try harder to focus on the task in hand.

Speaking of which, back to this month's Get Funky! challenge, which is two projects (ie for me will be cards). One is to have a Christmas theme and use traditional Christmas colours (red, green, gold etc rather than the more contemporary pink, blue and purple - which I love) and the other is to be a non-Christmas project using Christmas papers. The challenge has been inspired by the recent release of Funky Hand's new CD: Twelve Crafters Crafting. Full of gorgeous design papers in a range of lovely colours … can easily see them gracing my cards.

As I might have mentioned once or twice, I've had a busy, and rewarding, autumn of card-marking and had just one more November birthday to go: my friend Cilla. I thought that I'd address this and combine the challenge with my long-standing wish to make a waterfall card from scratch. That's three birds with one stone, isn't it? And, so I did …

I've used three papers from the "O Christmas Tree" collection, which is a delightful combination of shades of jade, turquoise and brown. I love this mix of colours - and it's especially good at the moment as my printer's low on yellow ink due to all the autumnal papers I've printed and crafted with recently. I feel that I've cheated a bit - or at least taken the easy option - by using a star paper and one of the plain textured papers rather than anything more festively challenging. Apart from the stripes and spots, they are probably the least Christmassy of the collection. I have also used tiny bits of a third paper that has a snowflake background but have snipped carefully just to get the neutral dashed line. I'd usually have gone with some of the striped and spotted papers, which Anice always includes in her collections, but they are too busy for this waterfall design. Will use them on something else - especially the gorgeous striped one with hand doodles.

The waterfall mechanism is actually really simple: just a case of cutting a long enough strip, scoring accurately (2 cm gaps work well here with a 4 cm width), folding well, positioning the decorative elements carefully and fixing the whole thing securely to the card (belt and braces with brads as well as double sided tape). I've taken a bit of a risk using scalloped circles that are a tiny bit wider than the 4 cm squares on which they are mounted but they are moving well … so far. I'm pleased with how the holographic card and the silver embossed letters work with the browns and turquoises of the design papers. And am glad to have found scraps of matching ribbons in my stash to make the pull-tag. Another example of why crafters are right never to throw anything away! Embellishing with a few holographic stars added a little more to the Christmassy reference.

So, halfway there challenge-wise, and pretty happy so far … I think the Christmas card component will be to my 2011 design, but I haven't decided which papers to use yet. Happily, the closing date for the challenge is a week beyond the Australia posting date so I've got a bit of a breathing space there.