Today’s card is really unusual in that there is no stamping at all! I made it at the crop and it was yet another card that started with no real idea where it was going. I knew that I wanted to play with the delicate ornament thinlits dies but that was about it!

To start with I cut out the fancy ornament in real red card using the precision base plate which makes an enormous difference with intricate dies. I like to use the paper piercing tool (or the pokey tool as it was christened by my 8 year old friend Mara a few days ago) to help remove the pieces as well as to run around the image to clean up little wispy pieces of cardstock. I definitely wanted gold foil to go with this and toyed with cutting out the solid ornament and going from there but I wanted this fancy ornament to be star of the card with nothing in the way. In the end, I went with a mat of gold foil and just glued the cut ornament back into the hole in the real red card that it had been cut from. I thought about a string, a bow, a sentiment but they all seemed to detract from the beauty of the ornament and so I decided that less is more and stopped. I glued the gold foil and ornament onto a real red card base. I lined the envelope using one of my stack of precut liners, this one from the retired brights backgrounds designer series paper.

I’m trying to create a few simple easy to mass produce cards for those of you, including my friend Julia, who are short on time and Christmas cards. I’ll be working on those tonight.

See you tomorrow,

Liz