Keeping it simple

It's a busy week, with Bethany's second birthday on Friday and my mum arriving tomorrow, so I needed to get my card done early for the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown challenge.

It's a colour challenge, lime green and real red.

Hmm, not sure what I think of these colours! They would be good for a poinsettia, but I don't have a stamp or a die for that (makes a note on the wish list!). What with everything, it's a week for clean and simple, and I decide to stick to words (sort of).

I also don't have the exact colours, but again, not going to muck around so I'll make do with the nearest I have - fired brick and crushed olive distress ink and distress markers, plus barn door marker, and a red and fresh green pigment ink.

I get out the 7x7 stencil card and start playing, and end up with a range of cards. I like some more than others, and some I think are a bit too simple, I'll add something to them before using.

I think this is one of my favourites. It uses word chain stamps from Clarity, and an old rubber holly stamp, one of the first stamps I got, that I love. I stamped the words in fired brick, then went around one side of each letter with the crushed olive distress marker (the fine nib).

The border is a wide stripe of crushed olive, then a narrow stripe of red sharpie. And yes, I did test this on scrap first to make sure it worked! I cut down the card around the words, and mounted on a 6x6 card base; some are on 5x7 cards.

This is a similar card, but with the colours reversed.

And again, but portrait.

A different set of word chain stamps used here, and I had another go at a stamped drop shadow. The bird is from a Hobby Art stamp set.

A different approach here. This is a Crafters Companion stamp (the word bauble), with a Lavinia's stamp star cluster around it. Very plain, but looks pretty good in real life (in my humble opinion!)

Another take again. I used the red pigment ink here; the Ho Ho Ho stamp is not such good quality, I can't remember where I got the set, might have been a freebie, so the distress ink just beaded on it.

This is a version of the card above. This time I used my "Hope" stamp from Clarity, masking to get Ho Ho Ho, so could use the distress ink. But I used the pigment ink for the swirls.

And a final card using the pigment inks. I definitely think I'll add something to this one before using it.







So lots of playing, and a batch of cards, some more successful than others!