A green and red duo.

After reading all of the lovely comments that were left on my last post I keep wishing that there was a "like" button like on Facebook, lol.  Since there isn't I will take this opportunity to thank those who left those great comments - Thank You!!!  :)

I have two more Christmas cards to post.  Sometimes I just really want to play, and make a card without really thinking about it.  In these instances I will go back to cards that I've loved previously and reuse the layout with new products.  This also makes it easier when you are trying to mass produce cards for the holidays.

Several weeks ago  on a weekend my awesome husband (have I mentioned how awesome he is?  :) ) let me craft to my heart's content while he had some father-son time with our boy.  On that day I loved my my first card so much I used the same layout.  I ended up with two cards that I really love.  Here is the first one:

When I started this card I thought I'd be making something quick as I wanted to make several.  Of course I kept adding things to the process which ended up taking longer than I had anticipated, but I really liked the result, and I enjoyed the process which is the most important thing anyway!

As always I started  with 8.5" by 11" cardstock and cut it in half to make my A2 size card (5.5" by 4.25").  I cut down a lovely sheet of berry patterned paper.  I really love the cursive writing, for some reason this feels really festive to me.  To bring out the red berries I matted it with a piece of red cardstock.  Before adhering these together I thought they looked a bit too clean for the pattern so I inked the edges of both pieces with chocolate brown ink  I thought this tied in to the smudgy parchment feeling of the pattern background.

I chose the sentiment because I thought it worked well with the paper, and I really liked it with the punch I used (one of my new favourites from this year).  Once punched I inked the edges with chocolate brown ink, added some glitter to the stamped image, and added a bit of ribbon. I adhered the sentiment with foam squares to give a bit of dimension.  I chose thin red ribbon to bring out the colour of the berries even more, and I chose some hemp twine to tie into the kraft cardstock.  A little bow adds a bit of prettiness.

 To tie in the kraft cardstock a bit more so I inked the edges of the front with chocolate brown ink, then adhered it all together.  I made six of these in total, so while it was not a difficult card to make the inking took a lot of time but it was worth it.  Here is a close up of the sparkle:

Here are the supplies I used:

Cardstock:  Stampin Up!  Crumb Cake, Real Red, Whisper White, K&C Company Tim Coffey Blossomwood 12 by 12 Designer Paper Pad

Ink: Stampin Up! Chocolate Chip, Real Red. Stampin Up!

Stamp Set:  Stampin Up! Christmas Punch

Embellishments:  Stampin Up! Dazzling Diamonds, Natural Hemp Twine, Offray 3mm wide red ribbon.

Adhesives:  Tombow Mono Permanent Adhesive runner, Stampin Up! 2 way glue pen, foam squares, Zots.

Tools:  Fiskars Paper Trimmer, EK Success Flourish Square Punch.



While it took me a bit of time to make this first card I still had some time leftover.  I really just wanted to get inky and play, so I pulled out a sheet of Pink Paislee Mistables and decided to make a card similar to the one above.  This is what I came up with:

I also pulled out some smooch spritzes, and before doing anything I sprayed the cardstock I was going to use as a base with some gold spritz, and I also sprayed the white cardstock that I would eventually stamp.  I let these dry before cutting and punching. 

I really like the Mistables sheet with the stamps and addresses on it, so I decided that would be the one I'd work with.  I used three shades of green and a blending tool to bring out the honeycomb pattern.  I then sprayed the whole thing with more gold spritz.  I let this dry before cutting it down.  I decided to mat this piece with two colors of cardstock, a light green, and some more kraft (I loooove kraft).  I inked both mats with  some green ink that matches the base cardstock, and I inked the patterned paper with black.

I thought that the postage stamp rubber stamp worked perfectly with the pattern paper so after stamping and punching with the same punch as before, I used my Stampin Write markers to colour in the image as I felt it needed a bit more colour.  I inked the punched piece with both green and black, to tie it in to the inks I used elsewhere.

I thought hemp twine worked perfectly on this card as it looks kind of package-y, and for this reason I used knots instead of a bow.  I didn't like the hemp twine by itself however, so I added some green ribbon.  I added tidbits of these to my Santa stamp cutout, and attached it with foam squares.  The whole thing was then adhered to the front of the card.  I also made six of these. Here is a better image of the shimmer (although it really doesn't do it justice):

I love how these two cards really turned out so differenly but when you put them side by side you can definitely see how they relate.

Here are the supplies I used for the second card:

Cardstock:  Stampin Up!  Garden Green, Certainly Celery, Crumb Cake, Whisper White.  Pink Paislee Mistables.

Ink: Stampin Up! Garden Green, Certainly Celery, Kiwi Kiss. Staz On Jet Black.  Smooch Spritz Gold Glow, Emerald Sprinkle.  Stampin Up! Stampin Write Markers Real Red, Blush Blossom, Garden Green, Certainly Celery.

Stamp Set: Christmas Punch.

Adhesives: Tombow Mono Permanent adhesive runner, Zots, foam squares.

Tools:  Fiskars Paper Trimmer, EK Success Flourish Square Punch.