Winter and Christmas

I've participated in The Card Chain Challenge (CCC) for many years.  I used to keep track of where the cards I received came from--lots of different countries!  Most months I use the generic theme of friendship.  My November card went to one of our leaders, Gail in Norway.  The color option of midnight, gold & silver plus the theme option of snowflakes were my inspiration.  

I pulled out On Trend MME paper pad I HAD to have, but have barely used.  Love the gold metallic dots on white.  There was a scrap of a silver foiled toner sheet on my table, so made use of it.  Didn't have printed paper with blue snowflakes, so I just stamped the sweet cluster image from Uniko's Big & Bold Snow stamp set in Delicata Sapphire Blue.  I didn't want a white background, so I lighted brushed the same ink over the stamping.  My old 1 inch punch was quick & easy to get exact squares.

Originally I was going to do the Disappearing Nine Patch design, but I couldn't bring myself to do the cutting as I really liked the pattern.  I'd forgotten about Spellbinders Fleur de Lis Square dies I've had a long time.  It is beautiful & just the right size to use for this design.  The sentiment words & die cut are Winnie & Walter--a company I really miss.  I stacked the word & covered it with Nuvo Glaze.

Hubby's birthday is this month & I wanted to enter PTI What do I do with This challenge to make a white on black sentiment strip.  I've seen some great tree cards done in black & white, so decided to give it a try using PTI Enchanted Forest stamp set.  

The trees were stamped in black & embossed with Hero Arts Sparkle ep.  The snowflakes from the set were stamped in Delicata Silvery Shimmer.  For the sentiment, I white embossed the words from PTI Wreath for all Seasons on a black strip which also served to ground the trees.  

The card front edges were swiped with the silver ink--an old technique I've gone back to using more often.  

Don't worry--I do have another Christmas card to share!  I like many color combos for holiday cards including the traditional one.  Color Hues challenge inspired me to make another red & green card.  I've been debating what to make for the Uniko Celebrate challenge which has a twist of red & green.  Wreaths are a favorite image & I've made several cards with them recently.  But none of them were holly wreaths, so pulled out my Gina K 4 inch Wreath Builder template & Uniko Winter Foliage stamp set.  

The leaves were double stamped in Altenew Forest Glades & Frayed Leaf.  To fill in the white spaces, I stamped the pine branch from Uniko Season of Beauty in Forest Glades one time.  That gave me 3 green shades.  Altenew Ruby Red is a gorgeous ink for berries.  I masked in order to splatter green in the center & red around the edges.  I wanted thin lines of glitter, so used a Quickie Glue pen with ultra fine glitter giving a beautiful sparkle in person. 

I matted the square so just a thin black frame shows & stamped the sentiment from Season of Beauty in Brilliance Graphite Black.  That is one of my oldest ink pads & I need to use it more often.  It does a wonderful job stamping sentiments.  I'm also entering TTTC 142 using glitz, free, Christmas.

Thanks so much for taking time to stop by.  If your blog address is in your profile or comment, I will visit you.