Merry Christmas in red and green

Despite starting earlier than normal this year, I'm still having a last minute scramble to get Christmas cards made and sent out. So I'm making in bulk - lots of versions of the same card - and revisiting designs I've already made and can repeat quickly.

This card is an original, although it uses a similar background to this card from earlier in the year, so I thought I'd enter it for the last 52 Christmas Card Throwdown challenge of the year.

It's pick a previous challenge, so as I had already decided on the card I went back to see which ones it fitted. I found a colour and a theme challenge this would work for.

I started by stamping the Merry Christmas ribbon stamp from Clarity in black pigment ink onto stencil card, then heat embossed it with clear powder. I also did a version in archival ink to see how that worked.

I used fine liner in dark red to colour in the stripes along the ribbon. The embossed line made to easy to stay in the lines.

The frame is drawn in black fine liner, I measured a 2mm gap, 2mm from the card edge. I used a ruler; I had experimented with freehand drawing for a doodle-like effect, but didn't like the way it looked.

The matching stripes in the frame were a little trickier with no embossed line!

For the background, I stamped with a watermark ink using the twirly branches of my favourite tree stamp, then heat embossed with clear powder. I used pine needles distress ink over the top, wiping back to give a clear resist.

The background and topper were then attached to a 5x7 card base with a tape pen. I'm being mindful of posting, although I think I could get away with one layer of foam tape to raise the topper up. I drew round the background with the black fine liner to give it a sharper edge.

And there it is, a clean, modern card. Now to make a few more quickly, I might try reversing the colours to see how that works.