Kraft, black and a touch of red

This week's 52 Christmas Card Throwdown Challenge is colours - red, black and kraft.

Red and black aren't my favourite combination, so I struggled a bit to come up with something I wanted to make, until I turned it around to kraft, black and red. Because kraft I really do like!

This was a quick one, started around 8pm tonight, so no progress pictures. But it's a straightforward design, just two layers of kraft, on a card base made from an A4 sheet folded in half and cut down to a square.

The stamping is all black archival ink. The main image is from a lovely Hobby Art Christmas set. And I haven't used this scene before, so a tick for the "use something I've had for ages and not used before" goal. The background pattern uses the branches of a tree from the same set.

The sentiment is from a Clarity sentiments set. The first line is "wishing you a", but I didn't ink that up so I got a simpler version.

I edged all the layers, and the card base, with a black sharpie pen.

The final element is the holly sprigs. These are an old favourite stamp, red rubber on sponge, one of the first I ever got and I've no idea where it comes from! I stamped on some scrap kraft (from a first go at the main scene that went wrong) and fussy cut them out. I then added my minimalist touch of red, for the berries. I'd planned to use embossing powder, but it sank into the card and went dark. Fortunately hubby came to the rescue, with a tin of red enamel paint. The first one ran everywhere, we think it had been diluted at some point, but the second was perfectly gloopy, and has worked beautifully to give a little pop of colour.

I put the card together with foam pads to give dimension.

Simple and classic. The scene stamp is really lovely, with the flowery swirl below it. I'd like to use this again and try colouring it. Maybe I'll make the same card but with colour instead of kraft.