Merry Mass Production with Taylored Expressions!

It's time to show you a little Christmas card Mass Production - Taylored Expressions Style!

Now I must confess, I'm not a huge fan of mass production but it does have it's place in the card-making world, so I embraced this challenge and created a fun grouping of six virtually identical and completely mass produce-able cards using Wings of Joy and the Christmas Key Ingredients. I say they're 'virtually' identical because I did switch up some colours and images, but I used the same layout for each card.

So what do you think? And believe me when I tell you these six cards only took me 1.5 hours to complete, from stamping the images to final assembly...REALLY!!! I kept everything simple so they were quick to knock off, and I also kept dimension to a minimum so they're mail friendly.

I thought I'd share my design process with you and show you step-by-step how I tackle mass-producing.

The first thing I did was decide on a layout. Sketches are always helpful cause I'm layout challenged, so I decided to use Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge #86 because it was a simple layout without a lot of layers.

Next I decided on my images (all from Wings of Joy), stamped them on Choice Snow White with Memento Tuxedo Black and cut them out with my deckle rectangle Nestabilities. It's wonderful when you can swap out images of about the same size to create different cards using the same layout.

Then I coloured all the images, sticking to the same colour scheme on each and doing my best to use as few copics as possible to keep it simple and quick.

Next I prepared all the layers/panels. As I said, I used my Christmas Key Ingredients for all the cardstock and ribbon, only adding some Choice Snow White for the card bases.

The final step was simply adhering all my layers to the card bases. I used foam tape on the snowflake border for just a bit of dimension then added three Zva Crystals to each card.

After I was all done the cards I decided to add a few simple embellishments to really jazz up the images. I love how "stepping it up" can take a simple card to a new level and really make it special. Here's the before and after of each image so you can see the difference, and it only took about five minutes to add these special touches.

I added sparkle to the heart and berries with my red Spica glitter pen, and dimension to the wood perch with some Espresso Dimensional Pearls.

I added bling to the tree by colouring some clear Zva Crystals with a red copic marker then adding them to the ornaments.

And finally, I used my clear Glaze pen on the lights on the bird house and added some white Liquid Applique to the snow.

I hope this has inspired you to get a jump on your Holiday cards because there's only 73 more sleeps til Christmas!!!

Taylor has a fun challenge on her blog so be sure to pop over and play along.

Now let's go see what some of the other Baker's Dozen have come up with for mass-production cards.

Charmaine Ikach

Dawn Easton

Donna Baker

Jackie Pedro

Jami Sibley

Jodi Collins

Sankari Wegman

Sharon Harnist

and Taylor VanBruggen

Thanks for stopping by!

Karen