Christmas – Blog Crefftau MAES MIERI Crafts Blog

Nadolig Llawen – Happy Christmas

Posted by Gwyneth at 08:00 am

Dec 252018

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Nadolig Llawen – Happy Christmas
To All My Online Friends

Well, Christmas day has come round again. A time to cellebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ. A gift from God to the world.

To all you Christians out there – I wish you “Nadolig Llawen”, a Happy Christmas. May you keep the reason for the season to the forefront of your mind as you enjoy the day and the festivities.

I know that not all of those I come into contact with online are Christians, so not everybody will be celebrating Christmas, though some will be celebrating their own religious festivals around this time of year. Whatever your faith, I wish you a peaceful and joyous time.

While I send Christmas cards to family and close friends, there is no way I can send cards to all of you I come into contact with online, so I’ve made a Nativity scene card to share with you all today. It is for all of you who’ve commented on my blog this year. All of you who have commented on my Facebook profile. All of you who have interacted with me in any group or page online. Thank you for being there.

I have used some more items from a Hunkydory Christmas kit from this year to make this card. Together with a sheet of gold foiled background card and a piece of wrapping paper for the greeting panel.

As the base card was a sheet of background cardstock from the same kit, that I scored and folded in half, the background image from the front caries on to the back of the card.

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You can see my page on Facebook by clicking – here.

You can see the cards I’ve made using design sheets from CUP in my “Crafter Showcase Area” on Craftsuprint.com – here
(Just scroll down past the top boxes to see the cards.)

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(Thank you for reading this blog post. I hope you like what you’ve seen and read – You should find a box below where you can leave a comment if you feel like it – but due to the fact that, like many I’m sure, I’ve had some problems with Spam/advertising posts that are absolutely nothing to do with the content of my blog, I now moderate all comments before they go live. Genuine comments will go live when I’ve checked through the list – usually a couple of times a day.) (Thank you to every body who’s left comments on my previous blog posts. I really do appreciate them all.)
If you can’t see the comment box then there should be a link that says “Responses” and clicking on that will bring up the box

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A Big Christmas Card

Posted by Gwyneth at 08:00 am

Dec 242018

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A Big Christmas Card

Hi and welcome to my blog. Whether you are a returning visitor or somebody who is here for the first time, I’m glad you’ve popped over for a look.

Because of health/disability issues both my mother and I have help from carers. Mam has help a couple of times every day, whereas I get less help, but the help I get does make a difference to my life.

So, of course, both of us wanted to give thanks to the carers and give them a little something at this time of year.

With different carers from the same company coming here on a rota we decided to send something to the office that they could all enjoy when in doing their paperwork, or collecting shift details, or whatever they do when they go in, rather than try and remember all the carers who have been here during the past year individually.

So the first thing, of course, was to make a big Christmas card addressed to all of them. I decided to go for an A4 size card.

So the first thing I did was score and fold in half a sheet of A3, hammered, white cardstock. I then found two sheets of foiled red cardstock (not exactly the same foiling pattern but same colour – I think they are Adorable Scoreable foiled cardstock but not sure as the box they are kept in isn’t labeled with manufacturer with me). These were trimmed so that they were a little less than A4 and stuck, one on the outside of the base card and one on the inside of the base card, using fingerlift tape.

I then took two sheets of different backgrounds from the same Hunkydory Christmas kit and trimmed these a little more, so that when I stuck them onto the card front and inside there would once again be a border of the cardstock underneath showing. Then it was a case of choosing a couple of toppers from the same kit as the backgrounds. Using foam tape and fingerlift tape I stuck these onto the front of the card. I took a sheet of gold cardstock with some pattern foiled in gold onto it, cut a strip to go on the front to stick the greeting on, and cut a panel to go on the inside with the greeting on. The greeting on the front comes from a sheet of wrapping paper that has “Nadolig Llawen” written all over it in different sizes of gold font. The inside greeting was typed up on my laptop and printed out, before both the greetings were stuck to their gold backgrounds with fingerelift tape.

Here’s the front of the finished card.

And here’s the inside.

While I do have C4 envelopes, the addition of so many layers inside and out, including some added with foam for dimension, meant that the card had too much depth to fit into those envelopes. I therefore put some of the same wrapping paper as I’d cut the greeting from around the card before giving it to a carer to take into the office.

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You can see my page on Facebook by clicking – here.

You can see the cards I’ve made using design sheets from CUP in my “Crafter Showcase Area” on Craftsuprint.com – here
(Just scroll down past the top boxes to see the cards.)

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Nativity – Part 2

Posted by Gwyneth at 08:00 am

Dec 232018

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Nativity Christmas Project

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In my Nativity – Part 1 blog post I told you that I had a discussion with the nephews about what we wanted to do in Sunday School ready for the Christmas service at our chapel. And I told you that we had decided on a hand puppet show, but we had realised that those at the back wouldn’t be able to see what was going on if we actually did the show as part of the service, so we had decided to pre record snippets.

Who knows what this is?

It’s one of a set of display stands I made so that the glove puppets could be displayed as part of a Nativity scene on the front table during the service.

This is the Joseph puppet I showed you in the scene in my previous Nativity post put onto his stand.

I got a stock image of a donkey to print, cut out and stand up in the stable.

I used some wood effect digital downloads from the pack – 12 Wood Papers Cu4cu – to print out and make the “wood” planks for Joseph’s workshop, as well as the manger and animal pen in the stable.

Jesus was made by 3D printing a dolls head out at a much smaller size, rolling up a bundle of cotton wool, and then wrapping around the bundle and head with strips of a sheet that I’ve cut up for crafting (the inner “glove” for each puppet was cut from the same material) glueing it in place so that it didn’t come apart.

And this is the whole display as it was set up during out Christmas Service.

We even had a little lamb 3D printed for the shepherds to give to Jesus – although, as our minister pointed out in the service, the Bible doesn’t actually mention the shepherds bringing a gift for Jesus.

I think this different method of going through the Nativity story went down quite well in the service last Sunday.

I think I may even put together a video of some of the out-takes for a post before long. One that includes Mary head-butting the baby Jesus into the manger because he wouldn’t go in, and the Wise men head-butting Mary instead of giving her a hug. Oh, and one of the shepherds managed to toss the lamb half way across the stable. Keep an eye out for that in the next couple of weeks.

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This is a list of the 3D files attributions. We shrunk most in the Ultimaker Cura slicing software to make them a suitable size for this project.

The dolls head was a file called Doll Head by CreativeCoPilot.

The lamb was a file called Lamb by teentechsquad.

The face used for Joseff and one shepherd was a file called Face by Mucugaro from Thingiverse.

The face of the angel and Mary was 3D printed from a file called Female Face Mask – Rough Cut Stone by The_BeardBot.

Wise man’s face was Face Mask by TheFoundryTeam.

Another wise man and another shepherd was printed from Mark’s Face by brainwagon.

If I’ve missed any attribution for any 3D file we used please leave the details and Thingivers link below in the comments.

I hope you have enjoyed looking at our puppet creations and the few clips I put together of the puppets in action.

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You can see my page on Facebook by clicking – here.

You can see the cards I’ve made using design sheets from CUP in my “Crafter Showcase Area” on Craftsuprint.com – here
(Just scroll down past the top boxes to see the cards.)

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Nativity – Part 1

Posted by Gwyneth at 05:00 pm

Dec 172018

Thank you for clicking over to have a look at my blog

Nativity Christmas Project

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A couple of months ago I had a discussion with the nephews about what we wanted to do in Sunday School ready for the Christmas service at our chapel.

They believe that they are too old now to dress up as any character from the nativity story. And they were seriously unimpressed with the video produced by the Bible Society that could be used in Christmas services. So we had quite a discussion about possibilities before a decision was made.

And that descision was Glove Puppets!

We discussed the scenes we’d want to create, which characters in the nativity story we’d need to create puppets for, and whether each character would be talking or whether a storyteller would narate the story while the puppets acted out the scenes.

The descision was to have a storyteller rather than have individual characters speaking.

We searched online for ideas and images we could use, including looking on Thingyverse for faces to 3D print out for our creations.

Once everything was gathered together I started the construction work – the nephews were busy with school exams etc., so it wouldn’t have been fair for them to have homework from Sunday School at the same time.

The “puppet theatre” itself needed to double as Joseph’s workshop/home in the first scene as well as the stable after that. The nephews thought that Joseph’s workshop would have hanging racks for wood. Therefore it needed a way to quickly change the scenery inside.

The decision was to use magnets. Two stuck inside the roof.

And two attached to the top bar of the suspended wood rack, that can be seen here with the other props for Joseph’s workshop and sleeping area – lots of wood and a bedding roll.

And here’s Joseph in his place. The decision was made to use a box and cut it to shape for our puppet theatr. Going for a really rough, old building look.

The face used for Joseff was a file called Face by Mucugaro from Thingiverse. The licence details that came up were as follows.

We realised that, if we did the hand puppet Nativity show as part of our Christmas story, anybody sitting in the back wouldn’t be able to see the small characters, so we decided to record the puppet’s activities ahead of time, and then edit, put together, and play around with the clips, adding photos and maps, until we had individual, short, video scenes, showing what we wanted. The scenes, 5 short ones in all, were then shown on a screen at different points in the service, in between the hymns, prayers, and address from the minister.

Here is a link to the 1st scene – Golygfa 1 (It is in Welsh as we are Welsh and attend a Welsh medium chapel).

The face of the angel was 3D printed from a file called Female Face Mask – Rough Cut Stone by The_BeardBot. The licence details that came up were as follows.

I’ll hopefully be back again during the coming week to show you more of our puppet characters, and perhaps another scene from the production.

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You can see my page on Facebook by clicking – here.

You can see the cards I’ve made using design sheets from CUP in my “Crafter Showcase Area” on Craftsuprint.com – here
(Just scroll down past the top boxes to see the cards.)

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3 Christmas Cards

Posted by Gwyneth at 08:00 am

Nov 162018

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3 Christmas Cards

While I was busy makeing my batches of Christmas cards earlier this year one of the carers who come to help Mam and I asked me if I could make some cards for her that were personalised. She wanted one each for her two grandaughters as well as one from the dog to her husband.

These are what I made.

She saw me using an image of a mole, from a Hunkeydory collection that I’ve had for a while, and immediately thought of their dog who is always finding moles and presenting them to her husband. She wanted something a bit more ornate than the flat card I was working on at the time, and for it to be personalised to Dad.

There were several mole pictures in the collection so madeing something for her wasn’t a problem. The card is around 8″ square. I had the matching background cardstock so put that inside. I cut a panel out of the front and taped acetate in it’s place. Before I added the two decorative panels onto the front, which were cut from the A4 background sheet I used inside, I cut two more strips of acetate that were longer than the gap. These were also stuck across the front but bowed.

Once the decorative panels were in place I put one strip of red liner, ultra racky, tape dow the center of the topper and stuck it to the center of the top bowed acetate.

I then die cut a Happy Christmas and glued it to the bottom strip of acetate so it looks to be floating.

You can see the 2 items floating in this photo just about. Sorry my photos haven’t turned out the best.

I then die cut the letters DAD and stuck them onto the right hand side panel using 3mm deep foam tape.

And this is what the card looks like from the front.

I made a box to ptesent this card in because of the dimension.

Next it was a card for one of the grandaughters. The carer liked the image of a little girl on the stairs from another Hunkeydory collection.

This time I made an A4 size card. I stuck a whole sheet of A4 cardstock that matched the chosen image on the ouside of the card, and a matching insert inside.

I put decorative line peeloffs all round the outside a few mm in from the edge and then set about die cutting the little girl’s name and Happy Christmas out of gold and green cardstock for the Happy Christmas I stuck the gold version onto the green slightly offset and stuck the words directly to the card front using wet glue.

I did the letters of the name the other way around – green on gold. After a discussion with our carer about whether she wanted the letters of the name on straight or at jaunty angles she decided on jaunty. So I stuck them on with foam tape to give them dimension.

I also used different depths foam tape to stick on the framed topper.

I also put together two A4 sized envelopes for this card and the next. Think they came pre cut from Kanban.

Next it was on to the second grandaughter’s card. She isn’t 1 yet so 1 Christmas was needed somewhere on the card together with her name. The cute Santa image, from another Hunkydory collection, chosen by the carer has a Christmas greeting on it, and I had a coordinating background cardstock for this one as well. This time I stuck a sheet of foil patterned cardstock onto the A4 base card and then trimmed the coordinating cardstock before attaching it to the card with fingerlift tape so that it was framed by the foiled first sheet.

This time I cut the greetings and name out of white Adorable Scorable and another sheet of the same foiled cardstock, and I stuck the foiled offset over the white for all the lettering. The Christmas wad stuck directly to the card and the other letters and the topper were stuck on with foam tape.

And here we have the finished card.

Had to take the photo in more gloomy conditions than I’d like because all the foil lettering just gave a lot of glare in brighter sunlight.

That’s it from me for today. Have a great day whatever you are doing.

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You can see my page on Facebook by clicking – here.

You can see the cards I’ve made using design sheets from CUP in my “Crafter Showcase Area” on Craftsuprint.com – here
(Just scroll down past the top boxes to see the cards.)

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Some Packs Of Christmas Cards

Posted by Gwyneth at 08:00 am

Aug 042018

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Christmas Cards With A Nativity Theme

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For the cards I’m going to show you today I picked out images which had a bit of the Nativity scene on them from a Hunkydory little book. There were five images chosen, and six of each.

I started by matting and layering each image with a metalic mat of either gold, silver, or red mirror card. I wasn’t wanting every of the same image looking exactly the same so deliberately chose at least two different coloured mats for the same image.

I then took a pack of pre-scored, scalloped, white base cards and used 2mm deep, double sided, foam tape, to attach my matted images to the card fronts.

I used peeloff “Nadolig Llawen” greetings (Welsh for Happy Christmas) and randomly used gold and silver ones, placed at different locations on the card fronts, to make each card with the same image slightly different.

These cards I batched into 6 packs of 5 cards each with envelopes and the following label put inside before sealing the cello bags.

I’m not going to post photos of all 30 cards, but here are the contents of one pack.

And here are a small number of the rest, one of each image taken at random from the different packs, so you can see the difference in greeting location and matting colour.

So, that’s it for today – quick and simple cards.

I’ll have some more Christmas card posts to come over the next few weeks, so please do pop back to have a look.

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You can see my page on Facebook by clicking – here.

You can see the cards I’ve made using design sheets from CUP in my “Crafter Showcase Area” on Craftsuprint.com – here
(Just scroll down past the top boxes to see the cards.)

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My 9th “Inspiration by Gwyneth” Post For “Dragons Lair Designs” Blog – December

Posted by Gwyneth at 08:00 am

Dec 022014

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Design Team Card

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It’s time for another inspiration post from me on the “Dragons Lair Designs Inspiration Blog” blog. Hopefully I can inspire you with some creations made using a kit of digital backgrounds and elements that is available in the Dragons Lair Designs store.

As it’s now December, and most crafters will be well ahead with their Christmas crafting, I decided to try and inspire you with some pieces that don’t require a huge amount of time to create, that can be individually personalised if you want, and to carry on the crafting after Christmas with a simple Thank You card/digi-card and scrapbook layout.

By keeping the same basic layout throughout I hope to show you that personalising doesn’t have to be a difficult thing to do, and can be quick if you suddenly find that you’ve missed creating for a few people. Personalising can mean using different languages for different people if friends and family come from different parts of the world, or it can mean putting the name of who the creation is for on each card.

Let’s start with a quick card –

Christmastide 06 card01 03

The design has all been put together digitally in My Craft Studio from some elements from the kit. This was then printed out at a little less than 6″ square, trimmed and attached to the front of a 6″ square white card from my crafting stash – Quick and easy.

The card is completely flat.

With a little more time, and printing extra copies of some of the elements, a more elaborate card card can be made.

For this card I used a Zig 2 Way glue pen to put glue on the main greeting and on various places on the extra layers and then added green foiling before using glue gel to attach the extra pieces.

This card has some dimension, but I purposly kept the dimension low so that the card would go through the post on a standard letter stamp in the UK

And if time has really run out and you don’t have time to post or hand deliver then you could just put a digital design together and E-mail it – putting on the recipient’s name.

In fact, if you’ve got enough time you could change the name before printing out each and every card front to make personalised cards to put in with the gifts of every family member and close friend.

And come Christmas I’m sure you’ll be taking photos of the children opening their Christmas gifts – and they will need to thank everybody – so what better way than include photos of them wearing or playing with their gifts? Digitally put together a design and again either E-mail it or print it out and make it into a real card. Diolch is Welsh for Thank You – remember that using a kit such as this you can make your cards or other creations in any language you want – in fact you could use the same layout and not only personalise your Christmas cards with the recipient’s name on front, but you could change the language if required as well.

And into the New Year I’m sure you’ll be looking over the photos you’ve taken and wondering what to do with them all – what about a bit of scrapbooking! You can either digitally put together a page on your computer, or print out lots of elements and backgrounds from the kit and build a totally paper based scrapbook page, or go hybrid and do a bit of both. You can even keep your scrapbooking on a similar layout theme to your other Christmas crafting.

Of course, you could go a totally different route – but whatever you decide to do as Christmas crafting – have fun, and have a wonderful Christmas all of you.

Stamping Dragon Designs Item:

“Christmastide Collection – Page Kit” – a similar idea of card, digi-card, thank you card, layout, etc., can be made using any of the DLD Christmas themed kits.

Consumables:

250gsm Super Smooth white cardstock
Zig 2 Way glue pen
Glue Gel
Finger-lift Tape
White 6″ square pre-scored base cards

Equipment:

Scissors

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And that is it from me for today. I hope my little creations will inspire you to visit the Dragons Lair Designs store and have a play with some of the digital downloads available to buy yourself.

Please keep visiting the “Dragons Lair Designs Inspiration Blog” over the next few weeks as you’ll find various “Inspiration by …” posts appear from the other design team members, as well as colouring tutorials and other posts. I’ll be back with more posts for the “Dragons Lair Designs Inspiration Blog” over the coming months as well, so keep an eye out for those too.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

Dragons Lair Designs Links

If you fancy trying out some of Dragons Lair Designs, please do visit the Store to find all sorts of digital goodies for crafting, and the minimum spend is only £2 (you’ll find great digi-stamps and lots more).
And why not join the “Dragons Lair Designs Fan Group” on Facebook. It’s a small, fun, group where we have lots of different activities which include exclusive challenges, lots of inspiration and giveaways – and there’s a loyalty club for those who take part as well where taking part gets you points, winning gets you more points, and get enough points and you get a voucher to spend in the shop.
“Like” Us on Facebook
While I’m not a fan of Pinterest and especially people’s habit of posting images, digi-stamps, etc., to the site that they’ve got no rights to, you can follow designer Janette Padley on Pinterest!
See us on CraftsUPrint
Dragons Lair Designs Challenge Blog : new challenge every month
Dragons Lair Designs Inspiration Blog : a showcase/inspiration blog for lots of different crafting made using Dragons Lair Designs.
Then of course there’s the Dragon Boss Lady’s own blog – Straight From The Craftroom

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You can see my page on Facebook by clicking – here.

You can see the cards I’ve made using design sheets from CUP in my “Crafter Showcase Area” on Craftsuprint.com – here
(Just scroll down past the top boxes to see the cards.)

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(Thank you for reading this far. I hope you like what you’ve seen and read – You should find a box below where you can leave a comment if you feel like it, but due to the fact that, like many I’m sure, I’ve had some problems with Spam/advertising posts that are absolutely nothing to do with the content of my blog, I now moderate all comments before they go live. Genuine comments will go live when I’ve checked through the list – usually a couple of times a day.)
(Thank you to every body who’s left comments on my previous blog posts. I really do appreciate them all.)

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“Victorian Christmas” Collection Launch

Posted by admin at 08:44 am

Dec 012014

Thank you for clicking over to have a look at my blog.
Launch Day Creation

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Today a new collection has launched in the “Dragons Lair Designs Shop“ and as a member of the Dragons Lair Designs Design Team I got my hands on part of the collection ahead of time to work with.

The new collection is in a lovely vintage style – and as the title suggests – is all about Christmas.

Although it is lovely to make all sorts of creations ahead of Christmas for any sort of crafting, don’t forget that it can be used after Christmas to scrapbook photos taken during Christmas, or, if like many, you have old family photos sitting in a box that you’ve promissed yourself you scrapbook with at some point during the coming year then you are sure to find something in this collection to use with them.

I hope you like my creation.

SCRAPBOOK PAGE LAYOUT

One old photo and elements from the collection only used for this layout.

Stamping Dragon Designs Item:

Items from the “Victorian Christmas” Collection – found – Here – in the shop.

There’s even a DISCOUNT available for the 1st week!

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You can see some more, very varied, items made by other Design Team members on the “Dragons Lair Designs Inspiration Blog“. Please pop over there for a look, and remember to go to the store to see all the various papers and elements available in this lovely kit.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

Dragons Lair Designs Links

If you fancy trying out some of Dragons Lair Designs, please do visit the Store to find all sorts of digital goodies for crafting, and the minimum spend is only £2 (you’ll find great digi-stamps and lots more).
And why not join the “Dragons Lair Designs Fan Group” on Facebook. It’s a small, fun, group where we have lots of different activities which include exclusive challenges, daily inspiration and giveaways – and there’s a loyalty club for those who take part as well where taking part gets you points, winning gets you more points, and get enough points and you get a voucher to spend in the shop.
“Like” Us on Facebook
While I’m not a fan of Pinterest and especially people’s habit of posting images, digi-stamps, etc., to the site that they’ve got no rights to, you can follow designer Janette Padley on Pinterest!
See us on CraftsUPrint
Dragons Lair Designs Challenge Blog : new challenge the first Friday of every month
Dragons Lair Designs Information Blog : a showcase blog for lots of different crafting made using Dragon Lair Designs
Then of course there’s the Dragon Boss Lady’s own blog – Straight From The Craftroom

-oOo-

You can see my page on Facebook by clicking – here.

You can see the cards I’ve made using design sheets from CUP in my “Crafter Showcase Area” on Craftsuprint.com – here
(Just scroll down past the top boxes to see the cards.)

-oOo-

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Nadolig Llawen – Happy Christmas To All My Online Friends

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A Big Christmas Card

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Nativity Christmas Project

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Nativity Christmas Project

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Thank you for clicking over to have a look at my blog Christmas Cards With A Nativity Theme

Thank you for clicking over to have a look at my blog. Design Team Card

Thank you for clicking over to have a look at my blog. Launch Day Creation

SCRAPBOOK PAGE LAYOUT

Nadolig Llawen – Happy Christmas
To All My Online Friends

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3 Christmas Cards

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Christmas Cards With A Nativity Theme

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Design Team Card

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Launch Day Creation