Christmas Wreath

I find that making cards such as this Christmas wreath card  a good way of using some of the smaller scraps of card which I can't bear to throw away.  The background was made by running a piece of white card through a wood grain embossing folder and then using some Distress Oxide ink as a wash to give it a bit of uneven colour, finally brushing on a darker shade to bring out some detail.  This produced a suitable background for the rustic style of wreath with a selection of die cut sprigs and flowers.  The 'berries' on the sprigs were made with liquid pearl drops and left to dry thoroughly before making up the card.  A die cut sentiment and that's another Christmas card done and dusted.

Wood effect - embossing folder by Sizzix for Stampin' Up
Wreath and Flowers - Sizzix die set
Berries - added to sprigs with liquid pearl drops
Sentiment - Britannia dies

Pixie Snippets Playground #341

Time to visit the Playground again for the latest challenge and today I'm taking along two cards but of course they will count as one entry into the challenge - Mrs indecisive here couldn't make up her mind which one to use!!  The reason I actually made two cards, which incidentally is my nod to a sort of 'batch making' which as I said yesterday I don't really do, is because I'd cut four gingerbread men and quite a few holly sprigs and only used three on the initial card.  While I still had all the snippets ready to hand I set about making another similar card to use the lonely little chap flanked by a couple of Christmas trees from the same die set.  Apart from the base cards both of these are made entirely from snippets, some of which are really tiny.

I started by stamping the sentiment direct onto the card - the Misti helped with positioning - then trimmed a snippet of patterned paper which was left from a sheet which I'd printed recently, backed with some red card.  The ovals were die cut from scraps as were the gingerbread men and the little holly sprigs; these had punched red berries (really small snippets here!).  This was repeated for the second card once I'd die cut a couple of Christmas Trees with punched stars.

The lovely Di has made a beautiful wedding card and the prize of course is on this theme - a very pretty collection which will prove so useful for the lucky winner. 

Ovals - Stitched shapes dies by Sizzix for Stampin' Up
Men, Trees and Holly - all from free die set which came with a recent magazine
Holly berries and Stars - punches used
Sentiment - from a seasonal stamp set Stampin' Up.