simple Christmas

I can’t believe that I used the word Christmas on a post! Yikes! :) But, I guess it is that time…

Playing along with the Hero Arts challenge for last week (and hugely honored and thrilled that this card was chosen as the winner for the week! wow!) I wanted to create cards that were simple, classy, and easy to mass produce. For the first card, I stamped the Stunning Snowflake design block on a piece of Ocean Tides cardstock with watermark ink. On the Aqua Mist card base, I stamped the celebrate the season sentiment on the top, again in watermark ink. To cover up the line between the cardstocks, I applied a piece of ribbon.

The snowflakes were punched out of cardstock and heat embossed. Gems were added to the centers. The sentiment was heat embossed on the bottom.

Tip: If you have a watermark-inked background and you are going to heat emboss an image over the top…let it dry overnight, otherwise, you end up with embossing powder sticking to the background. (Click on my card, you will see….) I tried heating it with an embossing gun, to speed up the drying time, but it didn’t work.

This card has a watermark ink background using the Dots and Flowers design block. I also used the watermark ink to distress the edges. It adds a subtle touch. the row of little trees were stamped along the bottom of a piece of cardstock and a star gem was added to the top of one tree. Then I added a big, fun bow. Ok, so that isn’t so easy to mass produce or mail. But if you moved the sentiment to the center of the Rustic White cardstock, that would work, without the bow. :)

This last card is my favorite!! I wanted to stamp the little trees in a row again. Not wanting to use anything but stamps, I scored two lines to give the trees their own little space. Then I stamped the Designer Woodgrain design block above the top score lines and below the bottom score lines. It was easy to line the stamp up with the score lines. And another star gem. Love those!

Have you started making cards yet? Going simple this year? I confess that since having the little man, we have been enjoying picking out the photo cards. Its one of those silly things that I was waiting to get to do once we had a family! :) Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Stamps (Hero Arts-Holiday Sayings, Stunning Snowflakes, Designer Woodgrain, Dots and Flowers), Cardstock (Papertrey Ink-Kraft, Rustic White, Ocean Tides, Aqua Mist, Pure Poppy), Ink (Palette-Landscape, Dark Chocolate) Tsukineko (Versamark Watermark), Gems (Hero Arts), Ribbon (Offray (green stripes), American Crafts (multi-stripes)), Twine (May Arts), Button (Papertrey Ink (Pure Poppy), Embossing Powder (Stampendous-Detail White), (Judi Kins), Punch (Martha Stewart)