Have you ever designed a card & then...

a year later find a similar technique in a magazine!!!!
I designed the card below in both pink & purple colourways using pretty foreign postage stamps for my background paper....

I am a lover of tags & vellum on cards & pressed real flowers. This was really easy to make.
This month in two of the card magazines, they show how to use stamps or faux stamps on your cards...
I only get one card magazine a month, Papercraft Inspirations, on subscription.
However, being the festive season I look at the others for free papers or unusual ideas to get my creative juices flowing. I have to admit that when it comes to Xmas designs I have no talent for them. I can only think of the obvious which is why I often resort to decoupage...
The two mags I picked up this month both had some nice xmas papers to use on cards some of which I will never use as I find them too bold but in small bits they might work.
Papercraft Essentials is one mag I do like & they offer some nice bead projects for those "beady Ladies" amongst us!! (I can't string beads together decoratively to save my life!!)
They also have a nice article on using Perfect Pearls & some shows us gift bags but if you want to see a stunning gift bag go over to Kathy's blog for her bagalicious!!!! (Me yearns for that bag, precioussssssss) There is an article on using moulds which I found of interest as I have some Makins clay. Another trick I haven't tried yet is stamping & watercolouring the design, Gina Martin shows us how. Their is a bit about buttons & I love buttons. Natalie O'Shea uses self covered buttons & I actually bought some of those last weekend to use with some xmas fabric... Their is also a sketch & ideas from Kirsty wiseman which looks really good too.
Simply Cards & Papercrafts, has the Cardmaker of the Year finalists in & I know many of you already have this so not much point me going into this one in too great a detail. However, I selected this one for the unusual card ideas for xmas by Michelle Powell. Their is an article about the very expensive but everyone wants ..Cricut!!!!!!! Quite a nice mag & I think the Invites for Special Occasions, might well be adaptable for something else...
Pne of these mags & I can't remember which gave away a free sample Cd of Crafter's Companion. I have looked at these to buy & it was great to get a free sample to play with. I used one of the papers for my SPARKLE card.