Natural Compositions for Easy Emboss Resist

I'm starting to gear up for Christmas by creating a variety of fairly simple (but hopefully still impressive, easily and quickly reproducible Christmas cards. This is my first clean and simple one, and I decided to try emboss resist on the pre-embossed Natural Compositions Specialty paper... I think I like the effect, but I'm looking forward to trying it with different and darker colors for more POP! I am also loving this new single stamp, the Vintage Faceted buttons and Sweater Trim.

I used the Color Throwdown challenge, Freshly Made Sketches sketch, SU-Only's Challenge for a clean and simple Christmas card, and Hand Stamped Sentiment's snowflake theme...

Pretty Party

I started out with the Creating Pretty Cards sketch and the Stampin' Royals inspiration photo, with the full intention of making a boy's birthday card, with brightly patterned pennants and boy friendly elements.... I ended up having to give him a card from my pre-made stash instead, because as I got into the design for this card, each aspect made it more and more feminine, until the point where I just gave in and started making the flowers I was so itching to add. It may not be at all what I intended, but it's one of my favorite cards overall! Happy Accidents (which is also a fabulous movie I saw recently... you should watch it too!)

And here is the great sketch and the photo with endless elements of inspiration:

Grunge Rock

I've been challenged with multiple boy cards to make this month, and this one is perfect for my nephew's 8th birthday, if I do say so myself ;) After the DSP layer, my next favorite thing is the brad, that I "stamped" on Versamark, and added Tempting Turquoise embossing powder. I used 4 challenges here... the sketch was from Pals Paper Arts, the colours were from ColourQ, Just Add Ink's theme was music, and Anything Goes was stitching.

And the challenge pictures:

Sk8er Boi

No, this card doesn't have anything to do with Avril Lavigne, but that song title is just perfect for this card for a 9 year old boy. Now that I think about it though, maybe I should make and send her and Chad Kroeger a congratulations card, so if I ever run into her at our local grocery store near his Abbotsford home, I'll have a conversation starter ready ;) Anyway, enough about that...

Is it just me, or does it get harder and harder to make boy cards, once they pass the years of dinosaurs, trains and other classic little boy toys? Lately I've been feeling like all the cards I make for boys 7+ are either boring and plain, or the same as all the other ones... but I managed to break my boredom mold with this one, and was quite happy with it, and my nephew seemed to like it too!

I used the Color Throwdown challenge and Mojo Monday sketch for this one, some grungy looking embossing, and the denim ribbon, to "boy it up" a bit extra ;)

Here are the challenges:

Vellum in Flight

This Papillon Potpourri butterfly set and coordinating punch are one of my favorite sets ever, and even though I should have made another Christmas card for club, I could NOT wait till January to play with these! I thought the detailed butterfly would look beautiful on vellum, but when I tried it out, it just didn't quite pop enough. So I gave it a try on Whisper White, and it popped all right, but it didn't have any softness. But then I decided to see what the vellum image on top of the cardstock image might look like... AMAZING!!! Bright, and clear, but with a softness and a very realistic 3D look to it. I will definitely be trying this again! I also used a hostess set (which I realized too late was not current), with a  circus bear on the tag. I just inked the border and sentiment with a marker, leaving the left space empty for a nice seam-binding bow. I used Sunny Challenges & Creations sketch for this and Anything Goes again.

The sketch:

Faux silk and modified Peek-a-Boo!

I love the super easy faux silk technique and thought it would add some extra interest to a fairly basic club card. To do this technique, all you do is crumple up a sheet of plain tissue paper, carefully spread it back out, glue stick the entire cardstock surface, and then smoosh it on. You can add stamping behind it too, but I still with a clean look for this card.

I used the Pals Paper Arts color challenge, the iSpy Sketches sketch challenge, and the Anything Goes challenge. For the oval in the sketch, I decided to swap out to a square, and use a Peek-a-Boo die frame with the door sliced off.

And the challenges: