Sweet Stampin' ~ Last Minute Christmas Gorgeousness

December 20, 2020

Sweet Stampin' ~ Last Minute Christmas Gorgeousness

Hey lovelies, it's going to be a bit of a post-a-rama from me this weekend, because I've had no chance at all to post this month and I'm SO behind! I have joy and loveliness to share with you and it's helping distract me from other things on my mind. We are actually having a 'Last Minute' Christmas challenge at Sweet Stampin' this fortnight, so show us all your last minute Christmas creations!

I have three bosses and two of them are fellas, so I wanted to create a couple of more masculine Christmas creations for them. I had some papers on my desk from previous Christmas crafting adventures, so thought I'd just pull a few of these loose elements together and see what came out. I love them both in their different but similar ways! The first design, I had this rich red paper, which I think is from an Echo Park paper pad, I'll have to hunt that out and I'd also been playing with my lovely scallop die from the Faye Wynn-Jones collection at Whimsy Stamps. It was a great fit for this design. I cut it from silver cardstock and mounted the image panel with foam on top. That beautiful image is from Unity Stamps and so is the cheeky and fun sentiment.

I had a little hessian strip that was an offcut from an earlier make, it wasn't big enough to go right across the card, but I kinda liked the way it set up the image, so just went with it. I threw a little twine on top and tied on some cute little brass pinecone charms from the Little Fawn collection by Craft Consortium. The designer Nina Štajner's style is sweet and whimsical and beautiful and I love these sweet charms that went with this set.

Here's a close up of this beautiful Unity Stamps image. I think it's so regal and honestly, it needed little more than the ink itself! I used kraft card for the base to give that rustic masculine feel. It has a slight texture to it, so I opted 'not' to emboss it after stamping. I felt with the texture etc, it was kind of enough and after all, I was going for a quick 'last minute' make!

Did you notice that the stags horns have all the names of Santa's Reindeer on them?! I thought that was such a cool feature! Another reason I didn't emboss, so as not to loose those tiny details from the stamp in embossing powder. I must invest in some super-fine black powder! This image stamped perfectly first time, there was no need for a second pass. I did use Versafine Onyx Black though, since I wasn't going to be using my Copics, as this gives such a rich clear impression.

My second card used the same gorgeous stag image from Unity Stamps called All Santa's Reindeer, but I paired it with a fun sentiment from a Whimsy Stamps Christmas Sentiment set called Christmas Moments. The paper on this one is from an older Craftwork Cards tartan paper pad I have and adore. I'm running out which is awful as I don't think it's in print anymore! Thank goodness Whimsy released a gorgeous Tartan pad this Christmas to keep my plaid and tartan addiction in check! Pardon the pun, hehe.

So the cards were quick, the explanation, not so much, hehe. I am a little late posting my creation, so I'll stop there and get it live. I hope you'll come and join our challenge this fortnight. We're moving to fortnightly challenges in the new year too, as we've had some comments that the weekly challenges just didn't give long enough to craft with a theme in mind. So we're hoping folks will play along in the new year a little more. We're super excited to have two of our 'original sweeties' back now too! Tracey and Fi have come 'home' and will be designing with us again moving into the new year. Squeee, super happy!