Start with wood...

Oh dear, I'm late again with my 52 Christmas Card Throwdown card.

Andreja has chosen "Wood Background" as the stash challenge for June, so our design team have come up with some really lovely, natural looking, cards for inspiration. 

Here's my contribution.

For my wood background, I used kraft card and the wood design embossing folder from Sheena Douglas' textures collection.

I tried two approaches. I painted one sheet of kraft with white gesso first, the other I left plain. I added distress ink to the folder before embossing - brushed corduroy and crushed olive on the gessoed card, then the darker walnut stain on the plain kraft.

Love this! I've used the plain card this time, but I love the white washed look too, this would go well with dark red toppers.

For these cards I use iced spruce - I love this colour, a neutral that isn't a neutral, so pretty and versatile.

I firstly stamped this great scene from Hobby Art, using distress ink. I then used a water brush to add shade, picking up the same ink from my craft mat.

For my other cards, I used the distress oxide in iced spruce to stamp. I cut each image out with a die.

I didn't use all of these today, but the spares have gone in the  stash for another time.

For each card, I cut the wood background to size, then mounted onto white card, with an iced spruce edge. I wrapped lace and string round, then added the toppers using foam tape to lift above the string. I then added the lot to square card blanks - 7x7 for the two Christmas cards, and 8x8 for the birthday card, which is for my husband's aunt.

Simple and clean, showcasing the wood background and the gorgeous image.

A mixture of images here. I added a bit of foliage to the dragonfly (a Sheena stamp), masking the outside to give a straight edge, to add interest to that square. The sentiment is die cut from a spare scrap of the wood background.

Very simple, using a square stamp as it comes (I don't know the make). I think this one would look good in dark red on the white washed wood background.






To join in with this challenge head over to the 52CCT blog. As there are 5 Saturdays in June, you have two weeks, it closes on Friday 6th July. Enjoy playing and experimenting, I'd love to see what you come up with.