Sweet Christmas

I had a later start at work today so I took advantage of the extra time in the morning to get a card made. It wasn’t a lot of time, so I did have to be quick about what I put together, and this is the result. I’m going to enter this to three challenges – Paru’s Cardmaking Challenge and Perfectly Created Chaos both want a Christmas theme and Simon Says Stamp Wednesday is anything goes.

I started by looking through my stamps to decide what I would use. I ended up picking a stamp from The Cat’s Pajamas Polar Holiday set. I’ve not used the particular stamp before so I decided to give it a go. I also found some patterned paper with Christmas biscuits/cookies decorating it which seemed like it would coordinate nicely. I used the patterned paper as a starting point for the colours to use.

I decided I would pick out particularly the red and the yellow accents on the patterned paper. I used the red for making my panel that the stamped image would go onto as well as the backing panel and sentiment panel. I found a circle die that would nicely fit my stamp and used it to cut out some of the red paper I’d chosen. I also cut down a red panel that would perfectly fit my card base. I then cut my patterned paper to be slightly smaller than the red panel.

Next I worked on my stamping. I stamped it onto a scrap of watercolour paper and coloured it in with my watercolour pencils. I went with very basic colouring. I tied in the yellow from the patterned paper by using it for the stripes on the cup and the candy cane. I used my Wink of Stella to blend out the colour. I then fussy cut the elements of the stamp.

I stamped the same image again directly onto the red circle so that the elements that aren’t possible to fussy cut (the handle of the cup, steam, and string tying the tag) would still be part of the image. I then used my Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue to adhere it into place.

Next I stamped my sentiment, from Lawn Fawn’s Merry Messages, onto another piece of red card which I’d cut to be the width of the card base. I stamped with embossing ink and then embossed it with detail white embossing powder. I then trimmed the piece down to make a suitable sized sentiment strip.

Finally I just had to assemble the card. I adhered the red panel to the card base with tape runner and used the same to attach the patterned paper. Then I used liquid glue to attach the circle panel before using more tape runner for the sentiment.

I’m reasonably happy with how this card turned out. I actually prefer not to use patterned papers generally, so it’s not my normal style. But I think it did work out nicely enough. And it’s one card closer to having all my Christmas cards done!

Love,

Lady Joyful