Christmas and Card-io.

Well, these turned out to be quite quick and easy to do. Not actually what I had in my head originally, I was thinking along the lines of stamping a wreath of sorts.
 So, I die cut a circle from copy paper, and was going to stamp a wreath inside the circle cut out.
I decided the circle was too small for this to work, so swapped it around, and used the circle to mask off the centre of the cardstock, and stamped around it.

The first one I made was one of the snowflake cards, and that one, on the right, does include a Clarity snowflake, in the corners. All the other stamps I've used on all the cards are from Cardio/Majestix, or Rubber Stamp Tapestry (RST).
 I was surprised recently to see some Rubber Stamp Tapestry  sets in Hobbycrafts, I didn't think they existed anymore. The sets I have are a few (!) years old now, possibly 10 or more.
For anyone not familiar with them, they are very small stamps- very similar to Cardio/Majestix, but on wooden 'pegs', so you may have heard them referred to as Peg Stamps.




  They came in a pack like this, containing however many stamps were needed for the image. This one, Poinsettia Wreath, has four stamps in the set.
    The black line you can see on the pegs denotes which way up the image goes, to help with alignment.
 However,unlike the Card-io/Majestix stamps, these don't build up into scenes, as the sets don't contain the right sort of images.

I'd added a few lines of removable adhesive to the back of the mask, and, having decided I was going to use 5" square card bases, I cut a sheet of card to 4 1/2" square to stamp on.
 There's no reason why you couldn't stamp straight onto your card front, I'm just not that brave yet!
In the main, the inks I used on all the cards were Adirondacks, Versafine & Archival. A few Distress inks also came into play, mainly for the purples.
 The snowflakes used Adirondacks in Stonewashed, Denim and Sail Boat Blue, Versafine Majestic Blue and Deep Lagoon, and Archival Cobalt Blue. The purples were Distress Wilted Violet and Dusty Concord.I used the Cardio set called Winter Flurry, which has 6 stamps of assorted sizes. In the corner is a Clarity snowflake, from their 'Snowflakes' set, and it's the smallest of the set.

The mask removed to give a nice clean centre where I can stamp a greeting.
 I went back to the Phill Martin 'Snowflake Sentiments' set,as they are a good size for this.

I used the Archival Cobalt to stamp the greeting.

 I matted this onto a sheet of dark blue card, then onto my card base. Final touch is an acrylic gem in the centre of the snowflakes in the Greeting stamp.

All the other cards followed a similar pattern. I'm not totally happy with the second one I made,using holly sprigs and Poinsettias, I think I stamped far too much background greenery, too many flower heads, and it now looks a bit busy. But, lesson learnt, and I left more white space in future ones.

This one has a greenery sprig stamped in just two different greens, Versafine Spanish Moss and Adirondack Meadow, and I also used second generation stamping to get some variety.
 The Pine Cone is stamped in DI Gathered Twigs, and Archival Coffee.

Archival Coffee for the sentiment, a brown cardstock matt, and amber acrylic gems.

I decided to have another try with the Poinsettia set up, and was far more restrained with my stamping this time! Much happier with this one.

This was the second snowflake card, and again, less images. If I'd done some practice ones of this in my book, it would have been a good idea!
The baubles card uses stamps from RST and Cardio sets.


 Again, I think I may have got a bit too enthusiastic with the baubles. But I get told the same thing about decorating the Christmas Tree, so maybe it's a good job there isn't a tinsel stamp too, lol.

Well, having finished these, I had a thought for a second batch, which I will blog when they're done. I thought it may look good if I had embossed accents onto an unembossed background, so I've stamped up six more  backgrounds, and am leaving them to dry overnight.
 By the way, the 4 1/2" on the circle is not the size of the mask, it's just to remind me what size background I intended it to be used on. The actual size of the mask is 3".

Materials:
 3" circle mask
4 1/2" cardstock to stamp on.
 4 3/4" contasting matt.
 5" square card base.
 Card-io/Majestix/RST stamps
Dye inks in suitable colours.