Sometimes it's the uncluttered challenges that are the most hard! I finally decided that I wanted to make a holiday card that featured traditional Christmas colors, without actually saying "Christmas". The perfect sentiment was from the Stampin' Up retired photopolymer set "Holiday Invitation" which was all about getting together for the holidays. I used two of the stamps, one stamped in SU Wild Wasabi, and the other stamped in SU Real Red as my focal point. The two stamps stacked atop each other determined the size of oval die I needed from the SU "Layering Ovals" framelits die set. I then used the next size up scalloped die from that same set to create an SU Real Red mat. These two were glued together with Tombow glue.
Now that I knew my oval size, I could select which banner size I needed to give the card nice proportions. I used this to die cut a Real Red banner, then the next size down banner framelit to cut out the pattern piece from the retired SU "Nordic Noel" Designer Series Paper. I chose this paper because it had all the Christmas colors in a small repeating pattern that wouldn't overwhelm the sentiment oval. These two were glued together.
The front panel of the card is a piece of SU Whisper White cardstock cut to 5-1/4"x 4", and glued to my SU Real Red card base. I then proceeded to glue on the banner, and a strip of SU Wild Wasabi cardstock per the challenge sketch.
The matted oval was attached to the card with adhesive foam strips to raise it up off the front panel surface for added depth and interest.
Finally, I hand-colored the two holly sprigs stamps from the "Holiday Invitation" set with Real Red and Wild Wasabi Stampin' Write Markers. Before stamping each onto a scrap of Whisper White, I "huffed" on each to add moisture they had lost while I was coloring the markers. I then "fussy cut" each of the holly sprigs out, and mounted them on the edge of the oval using one Mini Glue Dot each.
I like the brightness of the resulting card, and the use of "white space" to frame the message. I am rating this card at a difficulty level of "2" out of "5" just because of the need to hand color the holly.
Date: Thursday, June 7, 2018 GMT Views: 830
Favorited:3