I followed an interesting path to creating this card. I started looking through an old PaperCrafts magazine sketch book that I purchased years ago. My initial mission was to find a design for the December batch of birthday cards for our church card ministry. I flagged several different designs and settled on one quite a bit like this design. For those cards I used all retired products, including the large scallop diecut from the Colorful Seasons bundle, which more closely matched the sketch. Since all of the products were retired, it didn’t really make sense to share it here. However, I loved the layout so much that I decided that it would be perfect to share the same design, but with a Christmas theme using all current products. Instead of the scallop die I used one of the curved dies from the Quite Curvy bundle – I love those curves! And I pulled out the pretty paper that first was available last year, and thankfully returned this year so everyone can get some.

One thing that I want to highlight is that I altered the dimensions of the card just a tidge that allowed me to maximize the use of the patterned paper. I first got this idea from a set of card bases that I purchased at our local craft store for the birthday card ministry. I was VERY dismayed when I opened them up a few months ago for a crafting session and discovered that they were 4″ x 5 1/2″. What the heck?!? Why would they use less than 1/2 of a sheet of cardstock? But I’ve found some times when it actually ended up working out perfectly for optimizing the use of 12×12″ patterned paper. For this card, I cut the sheet into 4×4″ squares, and there was no waste. I couldn’t get the edge to edge coverage that you see here without having a portion left over that I couldn’t use for the card. Because of the slight alteration of the dimensions I was able to create 9 of these cards using fully a single sheet of the pretty ornament paper. I encourage you to give this a try! All I did was cut a standard cardstock to be 8″ x 11″, then I cut in half at 5 1/2″ and then scored at 4″.

This card is certainly a Christmas card, and that is always a magical time to me. I love the pretty ornaments on the paper, and one of my favorite times of this season is decorating the Christmas tree. That’s part of the magic of the season!

Christmas Gleaming Variety Bundle (English) [156082] $63.00	Christmas Gleaming Cling Stamp Set (En) [150464] $21.00	Stitched Shapes Dies [152323] $30.00	Layering Squares Dies [151772] $35.00
Quite Curvy Bundle (English) [156228] $41.25	Quite Curvy Variety Bundle (English) [158396] $70.50	Old Olive/Pretty Peacock 3/8" (1 Cm) Reversible Ribbon [149496] $7.50	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430] $4.00
Brightly Gleaming Specialty Designer Series Paper [150429] $14.50	Brushed Metallic Cardstock [153524] $15.00	Very Vanilla 8-1/2" X 11" Thick Cardstock [144237] $8.25	Pretty Peacock 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [150880] $8.75
Mossy Meadow 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [133676] $8.75	Very Vanilla 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [101650] $9.75	Pretty Peacock Classic Stampin’ Pad [150083] $7.50