April Christmas cards: Vintage ornaments

This year is just flying by! I can't believe it will be May in a couple of days; it seems like it was January just a few weeks ago. So I almost forgot to make my April Christmas cards. When I realized that last weekend was the last weekend of the month, I knew I had to pull something together. I made a small batch of clean-and-simple cards featuring a trio of stenciled vintage ornaments.

I decided to use the Layering Vintage Ornaments stencils (Honey Bee Stamps), which I ordered a few months ago, and I combined them with Catherine Pooler inks. I settled on three ink colors -- Rouge, Green Tea, and Skylight -- and chose one ornament shape for each color.

I used a stamp positioner to stamp the sentiment "merry & bright" in the lower right corner of 4" x 5-1/4" pieces of white card stock. Then I ink blended the ornaments, using more pressure when stenciling the circle and stripes so those areas are darker. For the accents and ornament toppers I used gold Hero Paste (Hero Arts). I had to apply the paste a little at a time and let it dry so I wouldn't smear it when I had to stencil other areas. So even though I only made six of these cards, they took a good bit of time.

Once all the paste was dry, I added strings to the ornaments with a gold gel pen. I used a Corner Chomper to round the upper right and lower left corners of the panels and then adhered them to white card bases. For embellishment I added several gold sequins. A couple of the red ornaments also have twine bows to hide little mistakes on the ornament toppers. And on one card there is a sequin covering up an ink smudge. Opportunities for embellishments!

I did end up with one additional Christmas card for the month:

I cut out my "practice" ornaments and added them to a white card base. I used foam tape on some of the ornaments to create dimension, and I drew the strings with a black pen instead of gold. (Turns out I like the gold better.) And now I need to start thinking about my May Christmas cards!

Thanks for stopping by!