Simple stamping with Peaceful Boughs - and a touch of metallic glamour

Handmade cards don’t have to be product-heavy or complicated... especially at Christmas when you might need dozens of them!

This is a really simple card to create - and would be even quicker if you used the Stamparatus for bulk making.

A touch of copper really lifts this card - and mixing your metallics is all the rage! This design would work just as well with the gold foil-edged cards and with any of the new metallic ink pads.

Simple Stamping with Peaceful Boughs

You don't need a lot of products to get started in stamping... something which I think we forget at times!

The card on the left just uses stamps, three ink pads and a Whisper White notecard, and yet it's still lovely (although I say so myself).

For the card on the right, I stepped things up a little with some extra stamping, some gold embellishments from the new Christmastime is Here Suite and some subtle copper stamping.

Simple stamping can be as simple as you like! My tip when bulk making is to start simple and then only add the extras if you still have time.

#Simplestamping for Christmas with Peaceful Boughs

Peaceful Boughs has definitely become my go-to stamp set for Christmas projects.

We used it at my Crafty Friday session last week to make this beautiful shaker dome pizza box but it's just as good for simpler projects such as this one. This would be a great design for mass producing Christmas cards as it's just one layer, stamped, with some ribbon around it, stuck onto a pre-cut foil-edged card. Quick and easy, but pretty effective.

If you want to create the one-layer look, use a fairly pale green ink for the boughs; I've used Pear Pizzazz here with Soft Suede pine cones stamped on top. I've tried all of the darker greens and the pine cones don't stand out enough. 
 

Shabby chic Nature's Beauty cards for a team celebration

I’m still getting lots of mileage from the Nature’s Beauty stamp set - which is raising money for Mental Health Europe and other mental health charities around the world.

I used it here to celebrate my team members this month and combined it with Countdown to Christmas - can you even tell I've used a festive stamp set?

I've repeated the background stamp in Mint Macaron on the card base of the same colour. By twisting and turning the stamp, it doesn't matter if I overlap or the image doesn't quite fit because it gives it a vintage “shabby chic” look. 

Non-traditional Christmas copper

Gotta love a bit of copper and I think it makes a great choice for a non-tradtional Christmas card.

I’ve embossed the big tree from Snow is Glistening onto some Wood Textures Designer Series Paper (Kelly's idea, of course!). Similar to Wednesday’s projects, I sponged around the edges again, this time in Cajun Craze and Early Espresso, before splashing with Frost White Shimmer Paint (love this stuff!).

I finished off with some copper accents using the Detailed Deer dies. I stamped the deer in black Stazon onto Copper Foil before die-cutting him out. He hasn't stamped fully but I quite like that as it shows off more of the copper and it gives him a slightly 'aged' effect.

Copper and navy themed Tin Tile card

I promised you more on Crafty Friday and here it is; the first of two projects we made. As I designed my projects for this event, I realised they bore no relation to each other whatsoever. Then I realised that this was an advantage... Crafty Friday has become so popular lately that we need two tables, and having two entirely different projects using different products makes that so much easier... and is easier on my legs!

This was one of the projects, using the Tin Tile embossing folder. We embossed it onto Night of Navy cardstock and then very gently swiped across it using a sponge dauber dipped in Copper Shimmer Paint.

The copper theme is continued with a copper embossed leaf, and some copper thread behind the greeting. And the little scalloped feature is from the Delightfully Detailed Laser-cut DSP.

I love this colour scheme; it was inspired by a visit to Trowell Garden Centre, where there was a beautiful display of navy and copper Christmas decorations. I took a photo as I planned to make all my Christmas cards with this theme, but it hasn’t happened of course. But the seed was planted for this card, so it wasn’t wasted!