Now that Thanksgiving is done I can start planning for the upcoming holidays! Not to mention all the birthdays in between. This time of year is pretty busy for me. So I’m loving this month’s #SimpleStamping for Christmas challenge from Stampin’ Up! because it’s a great way to spark some inkspiration. I’ve got a lot of holiday cards to make and so I like to keep my designs fairly simple. For this month’s challenge we’ve been asked to create a Christmas or New Year’s card using just stamps, ink and paper. Plus this month we can add an embellishment.
I was so excited when I found out that the Poinsettia Petals stamp set and dies were being carried over into the Annual Catalogue. This is one of my go-to stamp sets for the holidays. And so when I saw this challenge I immediately thought of using this stamp set. There’s a lot of images in this set that work so well together. And I love the phrases! Then since I was using the poinsettia as my main image I went with a traditional colour combination; red and green. For the red I used Real Red, not just because it’s a good colour for the poinsettia but because I had a couple of embellishment options that would work really well. As for the green, I went dark and used Evening Evergreen. There’s also a little splash of Crumb Cake.
Most of the images I stamped with full strength ink. But to fill in the leaves I wanted to be able to still see the lines, so I stamped off on a scrap piece of paper first and then on to the cardstock. I love the effect it gives when I do this!
For my embellishment I added some of the Real Red Sheer ribbon that is back in the July-December Mini catalogue. I just wrapped a bit around the cardstock and then added a bow on top with a Mini Glue Dot. Then I popped up the phrase using some Stampin’ Dimensionals.
To step this up a level or two, you can use the Stitched Rectangles dies to cut out the phrase. The Stitched So Sweetly dies are a new favourite of mine that would also look really nice. You can also add some Wink of Stella to the images. I love adding bling to my cards and this is a great way to do it.
I hope you like my #SimpleStamping for Christmas card! You can check out one of my past #SimpleStamping challenge cards here. And you can stock up for your holiday card making in my online shop. Now to get to planning out my holiday cards!