Merry and Bright

Evening Folks

I hope this finds you well and having fun. I'd like to welcome my newest followers, Jean, Annie, Kathy, and Liz. Thank you for following, it's nice to know you're there :)

I've been playing in the craft room while the EM has been settling into his man cave new shed. It's great, he gets to store all his handyman tools and I get the spare room back :)

Back to crafting ... today I decided to try out the free stamp set and paper pad that came with Issue 127 of Simply Cards & Papercraft, especially as the set included the greeting 'Merry and Bright', perfect for Hazel's CHNC Challenge 191. I also decided to take my inspiration directly from the magazine's designer, Sharon Curtis' fabulous cards.

I've altered the designs here and there but otherwise they are very similar to Sharon's originals.

For the first card I used a square shaped Kraft card base. The patterned paper was trimmed to size, edged with red ink, and matted on brown card. The length of red satin ribbon was positioned across the front and fastened to the back with some glue tape before fixing it all down to the front of the card base. The stamps were inked up with red ink and stamped on to snippets of white card. The Father Christmas was cut out and matted on to two die-cut layers, the plain and the spiro circles, before attaching it to the front of the card. Similarly, the greeting was trimmed to size and matted on to red and brown cardstock. To finish, a bow was made from a double length of the ribbon and fixed to the band of ribbon.

For the second card I've used a white card base to create a tent shape card. The topper is a scrap of a print made using the Creative Palette, inks and bubble wrap, stamped with the greeting in black, trimmed to size and matted on to red card. For the background, patterned paper was trimmed to size and fixed to the card base. The length of striped paper comes from a sheet of cut-apart designs included in the pack. The spray of holly stamp was inked up with markers, stamped three times and then trimmed to create the embellishments on the topper and paper strip. The final embellishments are the three pearls and red liquid pearls on the holly berries - not screamingly obvious in the photos, but it looks nice in real life.

The inside and the back are also decorated with the sprays of holly.

As well as submitting these cards to the CHNC mentioned above I'm also submitting them to the following challenges:
CHNC challenge extra for August 2014 - anything as long as it's Christmas

Stamping for Pleasure's Rudolph Day - August 2014 - anything Christmas themed as long as there's two 

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 139 - most of the card used for stamping, matting and layering and the piece of inky print used for the topper on Card 2 - all snippets

I know I don't do this often enough but I'd like to thank you for all your lovely comments on my work, I very much appreciate every one.

I hope you are having a great evening and the Friday will be kind to you.

Happy Crafting,

Materials used:

Both cards: BoBunny Silver & Gold Collection paper pad; BoBunny Father Christmas stamp set (both from the magazine mentioned; Colorbox Cranberry pigment ink pad; scraps of red Docrafts Papermania Textured cardstock, snippets of smooth white cardstock.

Card 1: square Kraft card base; scraps of smooth brown cardstock; X-Cut circle and spiro circle dies; red satin ribbon.

Card 2: white card base; scrap of palette print created with a mix of ink from Colorbox Crafter's Reinker, Fire, and Ranger's Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Mustard Seed and bubble wrap; Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad; Memento Marker's Lady Bug and Bamboo Leaves to colour holly spray stamp; Liquid Pearls Rouge; red and green pearls for decoration.