Whimsy Stamps ~ Christmas Catch-Up

Hey there my lovely crafty pals. I hope you've had a very gorgeous Christmas celebration with delicious food and happy memories made. In haste to get all my creations shared in the lead up to Christmas, I shared these two on Instagram, but didn't get a chance to share them here. I like to share all my creations on my blog, as this is where I come back to, to look back over time at my progression as a crafter.

This first card I made as for my parents in law, who would have loved this stamp set and the remembering of the 'reason for the season'. This stamp set is by Deb Davis for Whimsy Stamps and it really is beautiful. I've a whole lot of other ideas for this set, but will take my time creating those over this year in readiness for next Christmas. I've yet to learn my lesson not to leave it all 'to the last minute'!

It's hard to see the ink splatter details on the image above. I've used both a pearlescent paint and a gold paint to splatter the distress inked background of this card. The panel behind the splatter diecut front was watercoloured and then the black ink stamping added with versafine black ink over the watercolouring. I like the little bits of texture and interest the watercolouring adds, rather than a solid colour background. I gold embossed the image and top sentiment, but kept the bottom sentiment black to balance the scene of the wise men. 

I really do love the way this card came together. I had an idea in my head of how I wanted it to look and it was in large part inspired by this beautiful creation by the very talented Deb Davis, who created both this stamp set and the diecut frame. Visit her blog here, to see her gorgeous original design. The 'blues' were inspired by my mother-in-laws love for blue. I wasn't sure about combining the different shades of blue at first, but actually I think it all came together nicely in the end.

This next card I made for my mummy's twin sister and her hubby. I wanted something lovely and that conveyed my love for this special aunt in particular. So the heart stenciled background on the paper was a lovely starting point for this creation. I'd die cut this and used the frame on another design, which I will show another day. Which left me the central panels and no frame to go with it. So I used where the frame would have been to guide where I lay the pieces down and that was the base of this design. I used a lovely textured cardstock base which I cut just a little wider in all directions than a standard American A2 card size. But it still fit very nicely into the diecut envelope I made with a fabulous Whimsy Stamps A2 envelope die. So nice to be able to match exactly the colours in the card. 

I actually added some tiny iridescent stars before posting this card, which I've captured in the shot above, but took my main pics before I did this. I felt it needed just a little something extra and these did look really nice, and yet still subtle on the design. The fabulous 'Merry' word die is from Whimsy as are the lovely Christmas trees which I cut from white glitter cardstock. This was a relatively quick creation to make, with no image to colour, but there was still a lot of love in the creating with the stencilling and inky background. I find myself gravitating to cards without images over Christmas the closer we get to the big day, so you'll note the latter ones I posted tended all to be without hand coloured images. I do love to create cards with hand coloured images but there's also a lot of fun to be had exploring inky backgrounds and creating cards with other focal points. The large word die worked a treat for this design. 

Thanks for popping in today. I hope you enjoyed seeing my crafty creations even if I am sharing them a little after Christmas. Do you know, this is my favourite time to craft for Christmas?! When the joy of the season is in full bloom but I've non of the pressure to be ready for the big day, go figure! LOL. I think I'll prep a few cards for next year while the fancy takes me. Wishing you all restful and lovely Christmas breaks and I wish you a New Year filled with health, happiness, love and abundance xoxo