Patterned paper playtime

Happy new year! I hope you have enjoyed the passing of another year and the start of a fresh new one. I’m planning a slight change of pace with less design teams this year and doing a little thinking about what crafting I want to concentrate on for 2024.

One thing I am still keen on doing is using up the patterned paper so I’ve decided I will keep to that as my first of the month challenge as that’s worked well for a few years. Not sure this year will have the same theme for this each month but I’ve started with this month by getting a Cards by Kendra challenge template and made some cards following that.

This post shares the first few cards I made using the template. I didn’t actually finish doing this one yet as I ended up tidying it into a folder as I needed to clear the desk so so far just got these few sorted.

I decided to add some different backgrounds to these cards so I added some die cut and inked backgrounds behind the main elements from the sketches.

I also chose other pieces of the patterned paper to cut apart for embellishment.

I also added in die cut elements and sentiments and bits of thread or ribbbon to embellish. I also thought pearls worked well for most of the cards as further embellishments.

I added in a bit of embossing to add texture on a few along with some simple white die cut elements.

All of these are birthday cards and I think they make a nice set all together. Still so grateful to my friend who gifted me the Crafters Companion dsp.

So not a bad start to the year.

One thing I have decided is that daily posting is exhausting (managed daily in December in the run up to Christmas and did a few longer stints last year but it is just so much pressure and I don’t need that) so not going to try and do that but will try and create regularly so there is something on the blog often … but daily is a tad more than I can cope with!

Now to make plans on what else I fancy doing this year craft wise! I definitely think I want to try and do a bit more mixed media as I’ve missed routinely doing that… and I am loving the stitching dies from spellbinders so suspect you will see a lot of things made with those … but other than that I am open to ideas. What are your plans?

Happy crafting!

Catherine