Christmas card swap

I've been keeping busy joining swaps it seems.  I didn't join any last year so this has been a fun challenge to myself to get busy and join in.  Indeed I was challenged as card making does not come easily to me.  I finally found an older pagemap that I liked in a scrapbooketc.com email and got to it.  The papers are from my stash.  The silver is contact paper, "kisscut" on my cricut.

A few caution notes about cutting the silver Con-Tact brand paper:
It has a plastic top layer bonded to a silver sticky layer on the removable backing.  I have found a sharp blade and medium sticky (not brand new) mat works best.  "Kiss cut" isn't always enough (3-3-3) and I have found with the plastic blade housing, setting 4 cuts better.  The smaller and more intricate a cut, the more "extra" cuts I have needed.  The silver contact paper is like vinyl, a little stretchy, but the plastic bonded layer sometimes gives grief during the weeding (removing un-needed background).  When doing small intricate cuts, be patient.  I have ruined many cuts ripping them, inadvertently even.  Using the cricut tool kit hook and spatula really save frustration. Practice on simple shapes and see how you like it before jumping right to a project.  This type of paper is found with shelf liner products at many stores.

The cards are 4.25" x 5.5".  I cut the same silver Con-Tact paper with my ripple blade on my rotary cutter, about 1/8 of an inch, I just eyeballed the width of the blade guard until I had a pile.  I cut rectangles of the red plaid paper, figured out how much space was one quadrant and sliced down the other 3 papers to fit. I  goofed up the measurements somehow and ended up re-trimming all 4 sides so that there would be about 1/8" white border to complement the silver trim that covers up funny looking unmatched edges.  I warned you I am not a strong card maker.  Its okay to laugh, I do too!

 The word "Greetings" is cut from Winter Wonderland cartridge at 2.96" x 1.05", again from the silver Con-Tact paper.  The red cloud is from Elegant Edges cartridge, it was square but I unlinked it on the gypsy to make it 3.5" x 2.5".  It is boosted up on foam dots to give it raised detail.  I wanted to do doodle-stitching with a white gel pen around the cloud and decided against it.  The gel pens weren't cooperating and looking at it again, it could've spoiled the appearance with the size of the word.  Seventeen people joined this swap so it will be fun to see what everyone has created!