#projectchristmascard

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Part one.....

After a hum-dinger of a week at work, where evening time to do pretty much anything has been limited, by the time it got to Friday evening I *needed* to do something.

Once dinner had disappeared into our bellies I settled myself in the back room and started doodling. I've been umming and ahhing over a Christmas card idea, but it wasn't floating my boat, so I chopped off a piece of Japanese vinyl about the size I fancied, picked up my pencil and freehanded onto the lino. As you can see from the slideshow I did alter the design part way through. The lettering just wasn't working. I much prefer the end design though. 

What had also arrived was my new weapon for gouging (as Dave is calling it - mum did too on our course much to Jacqui and Christine's distress ;-)) a shiny Pfeil cutter, which worked like a knife through butter. Oh it is scrummy :-) I will be purchasing a few more! Definitely worth the extra pennies.

I had a most marvellous hour or two and a bit cutting away, with a few breaks to get hubby a beer and check he hadn't nodded off on the sofa (busy week for him too). Then it was time to print...... hooray for the spoon!

It is my largest print run yet, and I used it to try a couple of different things with ink amounts etc, as well as trying printing on a bit of metallic paper, which takes a bit longer for the ink to dry on unsurprisingly. My artistic advisor ( ;-) ) prefers the print on red, although I think the design 'pops' a bit more on the green. Next step is to get some cards to put the prints on to, I'll put some images up once I've completed them. I also want to create a second design sometime this week too. I am liking the idea of another bauble, or inspired by my sister-in-law Beverley's jumper this weekend, something based on a Fair Isle pattern, and a printing method I've seen today wandering round a Yorkshire farm shop - not copying the design, just the idea of 'wrapping' an image across the card.... time to put on the thinking cap!

(I've also been playing and made a new gallery page too if you fancy a gander...)

alix 

​*muppet* (not sure it works Darren ;-))