July Christmas cards: Pine cones and berries

I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago that for my July Christmas cards I was going to use the stamp set I got with my card-contest winnings at the stamp show in June. As promised, here they are!

I used the Winter Bouquet stamp set and three sets of the Color Fuse inks (sets 3, 4, and 10) from Rubbernecker Stamps. It did take a little time to play around with lining up the stamps and finding a layout I liked for the images, but once I had that, the rest of the stamping went faster than I expected.

I did all my stamping on white card stock panels die cut with a stitched rectangle die. I couldn't decide on a color for the card bases, so I went with a few different ones. For the green and red cards, I used the colored card stock for the whole card base, and I used a quilt-style embossing folder on the card front. (I actually used the de-bossed side of the embossing folder because I wanted the pattern but not the raised texture.) For the third group, I die-cut panels of printed kraft card stock with an A2-sized stitched rectangle die and then adhered the panels to white card bases.

After I attached the focal panels to the card bases, I adhered a piece of gold ribbon diagonally across the upper right corner of each card. The final touch was three gold glimmer dots in the center of each pine cone cluster. I like the subtle gold touches, but looking at the cards now, the white panels seem a bit too stark; I think maybe I should have added a bit of gold paint splatter. Something to keep in mind for next time. :)

Thanks for stopping by!