Whimsy Stamps ~ Crazy for Plaid

Hey friends, I'm back with another creation inspired by the Online Card Class I'm doing at the moment called Holiday Card Workshop. I knew exactly which stamp I wanted to pull out to try this lesson, which was taught by Kristina Werner with a follow up lesson by Mindy Eggen. They both had awesome ideas to share and different approaches, so I was inspired by them both. I've had my eye on this background stamp for a while and had planned to try a plaid background with it for my Christmas cards this year, so I was thrilled to have this be our homework from today's class! This stripe stamp is super easy to create a plaid with as all the lines are there, it just requires a second stamp with the stamp rotated to run across the first in the other direction. Simples!

I opted for traditional Christmas colours for this one. So I stamped the stripes in red ink initially, then rotated the stamp and did this pass with green ink. I was happy with how it looked, there were only a couple of little areas that weren't perfect, but hey, that's handmade right?! I had stamped the plaid directly onto a square card base and didn't want to trim any away, keeping it that square card shape, I think works so nicely for this creation. Once the ink was dry, I then added a very thin strip in the middle of all the wider stripes with my Gelly Roll Sparkle Pen. A subtle but lovely touch of sparkle. When it's in the right light, it really does sparkle nicely. 

I diecut a lovely Stained Glass Window Frame from vellum to add a subtle background before adding the word die. I really love this subtle but effective touch, to push back the plaid a little, so the word die really gets to take centre-stage. Adhesive was added only to the vellum where the word die was, so there was no visible adhesive. I diecut the shadow for the word die from a sparkly green cardstock and then diecut the word itself in a lovely warm neutral tone cardstock to compliment the strong colours I'd used for the plaid background. I channelled Cathy Zielske and added some gold sequins from a St Paddy's Day Mix from This Calls for Confetti and placing them with reflected symmetry as I've learnt to do from watching Cathy craft. 

All the elements I've used for today's card are of course from my favourite craft store, Whimsy Stamps and I'll link everything I've used below for quick reference. I'm heading to bed now after a long day but I'll be heading back into the classroom tomorrow and cannot wait to see what they have in store for us then! But sure to check out Online Card Classes, if you think you might be interested in doing some Holiday Card crafting too. Sending you all a big hug and wishing you happy crafty days xoxo

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