Pieced Nativity

Are you bored with this card sketch yet?

I flipped it & then turned it sideways here. So, do you get the concept of this card? 3 kings in the distance following the star to the manger. I know, how could you miss it.

Pretty simple card, eh? The gold embossing was supposed the help bring the eyes to the manger first, but I think the black stamped kings take the focal point. What do you think?

Amelia Joy

I was going through my scraps of Amelia paper and this card just fell out of the package. I used one of the tags from the Amelia paper pack as the focal point. Gold embossing always dresses up a card and makes it more elegant, don't you think? The Whimsical greeting set give you all kinds of elegant option for Christmas cards. This would definitely fall into the 10-minutes-or-less category. Probably an important feature when you think about sending out Christmas cards if you have a long list of recipients....or....you could come to the 3rd Annual Christmas Stamp-a-Stack on Nov. 22nd! Mark your calendars, it will be here before you know it, I'm tellin' ya!

Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Don't you love these little snowman squares from Winter Sparkles? They make me think of the saying, "Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil." This would be the latter!

The snowman square was stamped repeatedly and then cut into layers so he looks more like he's leaning in a window. Okay...well the picture doesn't do it justice. You'll just have to trust me when I say it turned out very nice.

The Amelia paper has always made me think of traditional Christmas. For this card, I had a piece of 8x4 background paper that was used to make the 4x4 card and a small piece fromt the decorative striped paper. I think it adds to the piece.

Focus on the Nativity

I wanted to focus on the Nativity scene here. Do you think the other elements add or detract? Perhaps I should have used bolder colors in the scene itself. I like this Snowman Nativity because it has a selection of stamps that tell the story, they can be used in combination to create more than just cards!

Mostly Amelia cardstock used here with just a scrap of Amelia paper as the circle outline.

Amelia Paper & Hearts

The first time I saw TAC Amelia paper, my first thought was, "It's perfect for Christmas!" And, it is featured with the Christmas stamps in our catalog. But, it's such beautiful paper and very multi-functional. So, I challenged myself to use it for Valentine's. In these cards, I admit, I used the very plain single colored paper, but it sure worked well!

Check it out. Do you think Hearts when you see red & green? Probably not! In fact, don't most people think Christmas? Well, here is my take on a red & green Valentine card. I used the green paper from the Amelia collection with scarlet and ivory cardstock. The card base piece was originally 5.5x 8.5 but I cut an inch off to use it for the small pieces on the front. The card front measures 2.25x7.5. The gold embossing with the Heartitude set looks good too! To get the effect on the ivory cardstock squares, I made a two templates from a post-it note and sponged on L'Amore red ink. The heart in the middle was used as a template and then set off the the side with a pop dot.

This card uses the darker paper from Amelia as the background. I thought it looked really nice with the "cracked glass." I've been looking for a project to use this technique and this seemed like a good opportunity. (This will be one of the tech's for February's class on the 5th.)

For the plus and the equal signs I had enough left from the strip I cut from the previous card to cut these out. I know it's a corny concept...but the card turned out kinda cute, eh? The flowers were stamped with Landscape and colored with Tombow markers. Burnt Umber was used for that aged look.