Holly and trees

In my Aug. 14 blog post I shared how I made my own stamps using Big Shot dies and some extra rubber from my clear-mount stamp sets. Fun, right? Well, today I'm going to show you two cards I made with those stamps.

Supplies (all Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted):
Stamps: Made from Stocking Accents die
Paper: Very Vanilla, textured Real Red card stock; Wild Wasabi Long Notes card base
Ink: Wild Wasabi, Crumb Cake
Accessories: Itty Bitty Accents punch pack, Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border punch, chevron twill ribbon, silver baker's twine, silver chrome Pearl Pen (Viva Decor)

I discovered that the best thing about using these stamps is that you can tell exactly where you are putting the image. Because the stamps were cut from a die, the entire piece of rubber is what you stamp; there is no rubber border around the images. That made it very quick and easy to line up the trees on this.

I started this card by stamping the Crumb Cake tree. I eyeballed the placement about one-quarter of the way in from the left side of the Very Vanilla card stock. Then I stamped the Wild Wasabi trees, one on the left and two on the right of the Crumb Cake tree. To embellish the trees I glued a punched red heart to the Crumb Cake tree and used a Pearl Pen to add silver dots on the green trees. I adhered the Very Vanilla panel to the Wild Wasabi card base and covered the right edge of the panel with a piece of chevron twill ribbon (the reverse side of the ribbon is plain twill), a bit of a scalloped red border and a piece of silver baker's twine.

Supplies (all Stampin' Up!):
Stamps: Tags 4 You, holly stamps made from Stocking Accents die
Paper: Very Vanilla, Real Red card stock
Ink: Real Red, Old Olive (ink pads and markers)
Accessories: Corner rounder, Old Olive grosgrain ribbon, Large Polka Dot embossing folder, Dimensionals

To make the background for this card, I stamped groups of two or three Real Red circles on the Very Vanilla card stock for the berries and then stamped the Old Olive leaves. The images needed more detail, so I used the coordinating markers to add faux stitching on all of the leaves and berries. I rounded the corners of the panel, embossed it with the Large Polka Dot embossing folder and wrapped it with a piece of Old Olive ribbon. I adhered the panel to a Real Red card base and added the tag and ribbon tails. (There is a punch that coordinates with the tag image, but I don't have it, so I cut this one out by hand.) This card is a little busier than most of my Christmas cards, but it's definitely festive.

Have you made any of your own stamps yet? Give it a try and then see what you can create with them. Thanks for stopping by!