I haven’t posted any new cards lately, but I have been busy making them.  I’ve got a pile of cards cluttering up my craft room.  😊

After the first few Christmas cards several weeks ago, I hopped back in to autumn cards.  I pulled out the Warm & Cozy paper pad that had been hanging around my craft room for a couple years.  This was a 36 sheet paper pad so I was able to make a lot of cards.  The papers are a nice mix of autumn/outdoorsy prints that worked well for masculine and feminine cards.  There were also 2 sheets of cut-aparts that I used with several of the cards.

I got started with the easiest card.  Since the paper already had the pretty leaf image on it, I just trimmed the paper down and matted it on some coordinating cardstock.  I used the same cardstock to diecut “Autumn” 3 times and then stacked them for some dimension.

The paper pad had lots of prints, so I used quite a bit of solid color cardstock for backgrounds.  With all the colors in the prints (shades of reds, golds, oranges, browns) I was able to use up some of the less common colors of cardstock that I have in my craft room.

One of my favorite cards used a simple gray woodgrain background and a large plaid focal panel.  A scrap of another woodgrain print was used for the strip across the card and a cut-apart was used for the sentiment.  To keep the card from being too flat I added 3 metallic brads to the corner of the plaid panel.

I really liked the wood panel deer silhouettes and made sure to all of the paper with this image, including the cut-aparts.  Keeping with the wood theme I used more wood grain paper for backgrounds and accent panels.

To “stretch” some of the tone-on-tone prints, I cut the paper into 3 inches wide panels and paired them with a coordinating 1 inch wide cardstock strip to create a background.  A coordinating Love-from Lizi peel-off covered the seam between the two papers.  A 3 x 3 inch focal panel and a few more cut-aparts finished the cards.

One of the sheets included very small, 1 x 1 inch, cut-aparts.  I thought about trimming the paper into blocks and using a block of cut-aparts as a focal panel, but since each block would include multiple different sentiments that didn’t work for me.  Instead I picked some of the general sentiments and used just those cut-aparts on a few of the cards.

After making most of the cards I had a stack of 2 inch wide strips left over from cutting a full sheet of paper into a background.  With at least 2 of each print, I cut the strips down and paired them with the remaining florals as the focal panel.  This was a great layout for using up much of the remaining paper.

Since many of the cards had a more masculine feel I didn’t want to add too many embellishments.  On several of the cards I used Love from Lizi peel-offs instead of matting and Nuvo drops and brads for some shine and dimension.

Since I’ll be donating most of these cards and they’re too late for this year, I’ll store them for next year.  The charity starts packaging and shipping holiday cards about 6 months in advance so I’ll be way ahead for next year.