Sharing Joy

Hello Friends!

It's time to share another design that I've made for the Card A Day Blog.  I'm rounding off a week of Holiday Thank You cards, and I wanted my design to still look like Christmas, but perhaps be a little less obvious.  As I've mentioned before (and haven't shared with you YET) I've been working on some projects with a troop of Girl Scouts.  Because of this I have even more scraps than usual, so I wanted to be sure to use some of those scraps for my card.  Don't want to break with tradition, now, do we?  (lol) 

For my design, I started with a 5" x 4 1/4" card base.  Yes, even this was a leftover.  We had cut lots of card bases, and this one turned out to be just a bit smaller that it should have been.  Well, I wasn't going to let it go to waste, was I?!

 I had decided to create a simple background with some stamps using the stamp-off method because I didn't want the color to be too vibrant, kind of like the holiday season fading into memory.  I went hunting through my stamps and found just exactly what I needed.  I also came up with the perfect greeting for the card front.  Once I had those elements I needed a way to 'frame' them, and remembered some leftover pieces from cutting rosettes that I had decided to keep for possible borders.  I had quite a few from which to choose, so I decided on red because I wanted to use traditional Christmas colors and already had green, silver and blue (along with a little gingerbread brown).  Here is your first look:

I stamped the design images directly on the card base after first stamping off on a piece of scrap paper to remove some of the ink.  I chose stamps that were representative of the season without necessarily being too overt.  The borders are the cast-off pieces of some die-cut rosettes that are shaped like snowflakes.  I roughed up the edges to lift them a bit off the card.  The greeting was stamped on a piece of white card which I inked around the edges and  then mounted with foam squares.  The next three photos are closer shots of the different areas of the card.

I know the greeting doesn't look too clear in the photo.  It reads, "The true joy of the season is in the love shared with family and friends."  I wanted to reflect that greeting in my sentiment on the inside.

I created the sentiment in MS Word.  I was happy to find a font that matched the stamped greeting fairly well.  I chose to print the sentiment in red to match the remaining 'border' piece that I wanted to use.  I think it worked out quite nicely.

Here is your full view of the front of the card:

It's a rather simple card, but I think it's actually one of my favorites of my recent cards.  I hope you've enjoyed it, too.

Now for those little details:
  Stamps:  Greeting from Great Impressions, Images from Craft Smart (Michael's)
  Inks:  Martha Stewart 'Sterling Metallic," Ranger Distress "Pine Needles" and "Vintage Photo" and Tsukineko Brilliance "Pearlescent Sky Blue"
  Border:  Leftover cuts from Sizzix Alterations "Snowflake Rosette"
  Paper:  Recollections "Jolly Jamboree" and generic white card stock

Once again, I am honored by your visit, and I thank you.  It's really fun for me to be able to share my creations with you.

Until next time.....

BIG HUGS!
CHRISTINE