Have a banner Christmas

I wanted to do CASual Friday's banner challenge (CFC104) and was looking around for inspiration when 52 Christmas Card Throwdown put up a challenge for a card using only green (and a neutral). That was the seed that grew this card.

The stamps are all from Impression-Obsession.  The wreath is embossed in a sparkly white EP and the "Merry" is in Forest Foliage ink.  Even the baker's twine the banner is hung on is a shade of green.

Celebrate

CASual Friday challenge (CFC102) is to do a red-white-blue card, so I'm looking forward to the Fourth of July. I love fireworks and our town has a lovely fireworks show every July.

The fireworks are embossed with a glittery white EP (It's called winter wonderland, but here we are going to call it Fireworks Sparkle).  The star is a wooden embellie I colored myself.  I just pressed it into a pad of Colorbox Lipstick Red ink, then layered some paper glaze on it to give it a shine. 

And that shining star makes this the perfect entry it 365 Cards Challenge Day 149, where the Wednesday word  is "shining."

Sponge(d) cake

You can never have enough birthday cards around, can you? Here's CAS one I made.

To create the design on the base card, I sponged the circles using a stencil I have. Unfortunately, I noticed after I'd done the sponging that the last row of dots on the stencil is not evenly spaced. Not happy about that, but I guess it's proof it's handmade.  The colors are SU Cameo Coral and Night of Navy, and Memories Soft Leaf (a shadow ink). 

The image is from Impression Obsession, also stamped in navy. The coral strip is embossed with the Swiss dot folder.

The sketch is from Retro Sketches, #53.  The sponging counts as creating wallpaper for CAS-ual Fridays, CFC92.  And a couple challenges are for birthday cards: CAS on Sunday #3, birthday card, and 365 Cards Day 63, birthday cake.

Wedding card

I made a simple wedding card using the Little Tangles sketch for challenge #7. This is also for CAS-ual Friday CFC91, Hi-O-Silver (isn't that a great name for a challenge?.)

Silver and white always seems like a go-to combo for a wedding card.

The image is from an old Stampcraft stamp I have -- it is a cube with wedding images on four sides. I guess the idea never caught on...  The sentiment is from a Stampin Up set.

I dry embossed the silver strips just to add a little texture to the card. I also added tiny half-pearl on the stem of the champagne classes, because pearls also seem like a go-to embellie for wedding cards.

Add a little color

Using black, white and one color always seem to produce a crisp and attractive card, so I was excited to see that as the theme for CAS-ual Fridays challenge CFC90.  I took my inspiration from The Alley Way Stamps Be-Inspired challenge # 22, which uses this eye-catching photo for inspiration.

The black-and-white striped background that the fence creates and the green on the furniture really jumped out at me, so that's what I based the card on. I wanted to play with the idea of changing the neutrals to a bright color. Adding a little color to the sentiment -- by printing it out a second time on green paper and cutting out a few words -- added emphasis to the sentiment and added a little color balance to the card as well.

Sentiment and brush stamp are both digital freebies from The Alley Way Stamps.  The brush is colored with both marker (green) and pencil (black). The brush is raised up on pop dots.

Non-traditional Christmas colors

What’s Christmas without traditions? Well, it’s the premise behind a lot of card challenges, for one thing.  Black and white is certainly not a traditional Christmas color scheme, so I think this card is non-traditional in anyone’s book.

The ornaments (both from Stampabilities) were silver-embossed on black paper, then cut out. They are “hung” from tinsel cord and popped up. The sentiment is also silver-embossed.

I’m entering the card for three challenges:

52 Christmas Card challenge to use Black, White and Metallic as colors.

CAS-ual Fridays CFC81  to make a card incorporating Knots.

Victorine Originals #49 to make a Christmas card with non-traditional colors.