Christmas is coming…

…The geese are getting fat. My bank account is aware of the presents which have already been bought (especially the ones to me, from me). And I have been making Christmas cards.

I was recently introduced to an amazing  website with incredible prices on crafting goodies. One of my bargains was a 6×6 paper pad called Christmas Cheer by Simply Creative, lovely vintage colours and imagery, including two tartans which are always favourites of mine. I do love a good vintage, wine or otherwise.

One of the papers is a creamy base with a subtle darker cream stripe. I thought it would be a good base for a stamped image. I dug out an old freebie vintage feel Merry Christmas stamp and used brown ink to keep the theme. I added a very little hint of colour.

I chose two designs from the papers which I felt complemented the sentiment and didn’t drown out the subtle background paper. One of these I cut to be the background, and one to a relatively small rectangle as an accent. I matter and layered both onto Kraft card. The sentiment was distressed, and I didn’t feel it needed matting and layering.

Once I was happy with the placement of the elements, I stuck them down and embellished. I used two poinsettias I had made a while ago using the Fleurs Flower Forming dies and mold (I got some messy points, not sure why, but I don’t mind them too much); one I used to replace a flower on the stamped image, the other disguised the corned I’d ripped when I was distressing the edges. I also used three flowers created from circles, cut into spirals and quilled, accented with leaves cut from my Scan’n’Cut. A little bit of antique gold glitter glue and I was finished.