Whimsy Stamps ~ Rustic Christmas

Hey crafty pals, I'm here with a fun set of rustic Christmas cards today. I've channelled all my shabby chic distressing urges, to bring together this fun set of cards using a really fabulous clear stamp set from Whimsy Stamps designed to work with Artist Trading Card sized creations. They work equally well as focal points on a larger design. All these cards are 6x6 size.

I used a similar design for each card. I trimmed the images with my deckle edge scissors, matted them with distressed corrugated cardboard, chose a paper which would work with the image and theme I had in mind and then finished with embellishments that tied it all together. 

This card was the first of the four that I made. I knew I wanted to use this gorgeous blue plaid paper for this card, so I stamped the image in Rich Cocoa Memento Ink. It was at this stage, I decided to use 6x6 kraft card bases, seeing that the image and mat would work really well as a feature on this size card. If you've been following me a while, you'll know I love paper and like to use commonly one page, so the paper design gets to feature and not be covered too much. I love the look of layered cards, but always feel sad when beautiful paper gets completely overshadowed by embellishments. I think this layout shows off this lovely paper nicely. This blue plaid is from the Whimsy Stamps Baby Bear Paper Pack, which has a fabulous mix of baby themed papers but almost half the pack is a mix of gorgeous blue plaids, so worth having and currently in our 'Retiring Products' sale!

For the card above, I used a gorgeous paper from the Whimsy Gilded Holiday Paper Pack, which is full of lovely Black, White and Gold Christmas designs. This lovely deer themed paper was so perfect to pair with the Reindeer Sleigh Rides Stamp. I used black to ink the stamp this time, to work with the gorgeous paper. I used a pom pom ribbon trim for a bit of fun and interest and added an organza double bow trimmed with a jingle bell.

I used bells on most of the designs, the one above, I added the bell to a wider organza ribbon, and added green pearls to complete the design. I initially didn't add pearls to all the design, but after using them on a couple, I was reminded how much I like pearls on this type of creation, so went back an added pearls to the blue and green plaid cards, that I'd initially photographed without the pearls. 

I distressed all the edges of the patterned papers on all the cards with my scissors and ran Distress Ink in Vintage Photo along the edges of some but not all the cards. The deckled edges of the images were all edged with Vintage Photo Distress Ink too. I used lovely plaid papers for the green and black plaid design and the green and red plaid design from my favourite Whimsy Paper Pack, their Tartan Paper Pack. One final touch I did with all four cards, was to add a little sprinkle of glitter. On the cards with the trees, I covered the three trees with chunky loose glitter and for the cards with the reindeer, I added a touch of glitter to their antlers, as if they've been walking in the snow and it has settled there. These details are really best appreciated up close. I did a short video which you can see on my Instagram Page showing the sparkle on the red plaid card, so pop on over there to see the sparkle on the trees. Also be sure to check out the amazing sale Whimsy has on right now. There's a fabulous selection in a retiring products section, which you can check out via the link below. Huge discounts of 50% or more will be added automatically when you add them to your cart, enjoy!

Thanks for popping in to visit, I will be back soon with some more December makes. I've been Christmas crafting like crazy, which seems to be my default, come December. I swear the year speeds up in the second half! I hope you're all enjoying the lead up to Christmas, my youngest has only 4 days left of the school year, that's gone super fast! Until next time, happy crafting! Big hugs xoxo

(I use affiliate links where possible, to allow the companies I design for to track the effectiveness of my contributions. I receive a small commission, which costs you no extra, but helps these companies see where their marketing efforts are most effective. I only design for companies whose products I love and buy for myself. My opinions are always my own. Please feel free to use the Whimsy Stamps $5 discount code in my sidebar if you're doing some shopping.)