Merry Christmas

Hey stampers, Anni here!

Do you have a favourite colour scheme for Christmas? Or for other occassions? I have to say I love untraditional colour combos for Christmas but I really love kraft, brown, creme and red! Is that already a traditional one? Or just red and green! I used these so often for Christmas cards in the last years that for me it goes as a traditional combo. And I used it on today's card featuring cute animals from Lawn Fawn's Critters in the Arctic.

I started by stamping the moose and the snowbunny. I chose these two critters because I already had the colour scheme in mind. For the colouring I went with alcohol markers. This is the medium I colour the quickest. To cut out the images there are coordinating dies available.

For the background it was a bit hard to pick a colour from the combo! I decided to use a creme cardstock. But it looked quite plain. Then I got the idea of a monochrome snowflake background. I die cut Lawn Fawn's Stitched Snowflakes from the same cardstock. I glued the snowflakes down with some liquid adhesive and die cut Lil'Inkers Designs' Stitched Mats: Rounded Rectangles from that piece of paper.
With the same die I die cut some scraps of white paper and cut out some snowy hills by hand. I matted the panel with a piece of red cardstock to bring in a little more red.

For the sentiment I found one that went with my design in Avery Elle Merriest. I love sentiments that I can mix and match especially when they combine cursive and block letters. The Merry I stamped and heat embossed in white on a scrap of red cardstock and the Christmas on a piece of kraft cardstock.

All there was left to do was to assemble the card.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

         

Wishing You A Merry Christmas

Hey Stampers, Anni here!

Today I have some tricks and tipps for you to create fast and simple Christmas cards.
I don't know about you but for me the Christmas season is the time when I send the the most cards. And always I am a bit behind with making them also I challenge myself to make two per month (often that doesn't happen especially in summer). So when Christmas is on the horizont I think about how to make cards fast and easy that don't look like you didn't spend much time on them.

Here are some tricks and tipps I came up with:

Create watercolour backgrounds
Watercolour backgrounds are always an eyecatcher. For this card I blended some ink on my cardstock in yellow, apricot and pink. Then I spritzed A LOT of water onto the paper and let it do it's work. The colours blended into eachother respectivly faded into white.

Use Die Cuts
Die cuts are an easy way to create focal points. No need for colouring and that's  a real time saver for me.
Lawn Fawn's Stitched Snowflakes is a set of small and big snowflakes, all with beautiful stitched details. I die cut them from silver glitter paper, the smaller ones two times, and arranged them on the background.

Use Big Sentiments
There are a lot of beautiful handwritten sentiments on the market right now. And they make a simple card special.
For the sentiment on this card I combined sentiments from two sets. The 'Merry' comes from the set Jolly and Merry by Mama Elephant. And 'Wishing You A' and 'Christmas' I found in Avery Elle's Merriest.

Use Embossing Powder
I think heat embossing always adds a little bit of intrest. On this card I tried something new. I embossed over embossing. First I stamped the 'Merry' and emvbossed it in silver. Over this I stamped the small addings to the sentiment - and to my surprise it worked out - thanks to my stamping tool.

These are the tricks and tipps I use when I want to make a fast card. What are yours?

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.
Anni