This is the second card that the South Burlington stamp club made last week. I really wanted a break from the Autumn colors, and since Christmas will be here before we’re ready it made sense (to me at least) to include a Christmas card. The Beauty of the Earth patterned paper has some great water-color look images in Fall colors like Cajun Craze, Merry Merlot and Cinnamon Cider. The truly amazing aspect of these papers is there are a couple of patterns on the “B Side” in Misty Moonlight, Night of Navy and a paler blue. I used one of those papers for the main panel on this card – it just screamed winter scenery to me. I love it when papers are versatile like this! Because the paper is so gorgeous, this card is actually pretty quick to stamp and assemble. This card is a great candidate for mass production to build out your stash of special, handmade Holiday cards.
I did do a couple of super-easy “techniques” on this card. First, I stamped off the top snowflake. What does “stamped off” mean, you may be asking. It’s when you ink up your stamp, and then do the first stamping on scrap paper, and then stamp on the paper that you’ll be using for your project. With some inks you can do it more than 1 time; ink, stamp on scrap once, twice and then on final paper. Another term for this is “multi-generation” stamping. It’s a great way of getting additional, lighter colors out of your inks that will coordinate perfectly! The other technique is heat embossing for the greeting. This technique was my ‘gateway drug’ for stamping. At the very first stamping party that I attended the demonstrator did a birthday card with a heat embossed element (I think it was a silver party hat). That absolutely blew me away! I was hooked from that day, and I haven’t looked back. Which makes me wonder – what was the thing that got you hooked? I’d love to know how people have found this fun craft and the amazing community of stampers.
This sketch was for a recent challenge, but I didn’t have an opportunity to participate while it was open. However, when I knew that I wanted to use the snowflake stamps and dies, this one seemed absolutely perfect for the vision that I had in my head. I really like how it has a background panel that just screamed to me to use the pretty patterned paper and it all came together pretty quickly. I love it when that happens!
 |  |  | |
 |  | ||
 | |||
