Size DOES matter!

Every year I make my Christmas cards, actually that's a lie, last year I didn't - I rebelled and made my husband buy some and made him write them!

I started thinking about what I wanted to make way back in November. I have loads of Christmas stamps accumulated over the years but of course I still had to buy the new stuff out there because I NEEDED it - right?

So armed with PaperArtsy Father Christmas, stockings and text stamps and the Tim Holtz deer dies I set to work and made some cards - large cards 5x7". but when I looked at them well they just looked large and messy not the classy chic look I was after. So I gave up in a huff.

Then whilst driving home (driving is probably an exaggeration,more like a slow moving caterpillar of cars creeping along the M1) from work one evening I had a brainwave - I needed to go smaller 5x5" would work much better with the images I wanted to use.

And by George I was right - take a look. Quality of the photos aren't great as they were taken last night in artificial light, but I think you get the idea.

I'm really pleased with the neutrals colour scheme and I think it met my objective of classy chic. Let's look at each one:

The deer was cut from ribbed card and inked around the edges in inka cold and little bit of raffia tied round the neck. The happy holidays message bottom left was stamped in copper embossing powder on a dark chocolate card and the patterned paper was one I had knocking around for ages and I inked the edges in burlap distress ink.

Father Christmas in the middle was stamped in copper embossing powder (over to one side to leave a larger edge on the left hand side) and then burlap and aged mahogany was inked over to colour slightly. The edges were scraped with a scalpel and then further inked with aged mahogany to distress a bit more. A brown gingham ribbon tied round the left hand edge and then everything mounted on a dark green card.

And finally Christmas stocking. I used a PaperArtsy Christmas text stamp inked in hazelnut and clear embossed on a cream card. I then used spun sugar and aged mahogany to colour slightly and again scraped the edges and coloured with more mahogany to distress. The stocking was embossed in black on some very old bright pink spot card and I used foam pads just to lift it off the text background.

So cards have been written, husband is posting today and now I can move on to the next craft task - a minimal twig tree hung with Tim Holtz die cut baubles.

Thanks for looking!