Holiday Branches

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you're having a great week! I'm knee-deep in all products Christmas and am shocked (as I am every year) by how much of it is NBUS. Do you think Hammy has figured out how to get on the computer in the middle of the night and order things?! I'm not complaining because it's like Christmas when the mail comes, but he needs to finger out a way to give me more hours in the day to USE everything!

Anyhoozle, we're all busy this time of year, so I'll prolly do more posts, but quick ones, just to share the cards I'm making which may spark ideas for you. Today I have cards I made using a NBUS full-size Holiday Branches stamp from Echo Park. The design itself is a CASE of a card made by Jenny Mullens, which  I saved from a Craft Stamper magazine ages ago. Thank you, Jenny!

The great thing about using a full-size stamp is that you can cut it in half and make two cards using the same design, as I've done here, or you can cut it into even smaller pieces for borders, small panels, etc. Wait. What? Clumsy me. What I meant to say was you can cut the stamped panel in half, not the actual stamp! (Is it bedtime yet?)

To begin the card, I did a watercolor smooch panel on mixed media paper using shades of green Distress Ink. (It's Evergreen Spruce that takes on a bluish tint.) For the first card above, the white heat-embossed sediment is from The Ton. The die-cut sediment on the second card is from Creative Expressions. The white paint lines on both cards were made with a Pen-Touch paint pen, a gift from Lolly, and the schplatters are watered down gouache paint.

Challenges for card one:

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Make your mark.
• CAS Watercolor: Monochrome.
• CAS Christmas: Warm and cozy.

Challenges for card two:

• Country View: Hand-stamped.
• Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas: Anything Christmas goes.
• Krafty Chicks: {Winter.}

 

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Here's one of another Twofer I made using the same stamp heat-embossed in white. I wanted to show you how pretty it looks on gold paper. The yummy-textured snow paper is from my friend Chrissie. I'm don't know the manufacturer of the Be Merry die. I used an American Crafts gold metallic pen for the transition line.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps: Anything goes.
• Cards for Galz: Let it snow.
• Christmas Kickstart: Snow.

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Please keep the residents and fire fighters in New South Wales Oz, in your prayers as they deal with the catastrophic fires.

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!

Note to Bette: I don't have your email address, so I hope you see this. Chester's card was made by Cornelia. The stamps used for Chester are from Cats on Appletrees. In the future, if you ever have any questions about the card illustrations on The Back Stories, you can always click on Cornelia's name at the bottom of the story and that will take you to her blog for details about her amazing cards. Thank you for asking!

*Life is too short!

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