Clean and Simple Festive Cards {with Eclectica³ Ellen Vargo Stamps by Designer Ellen Vargo}

Hello!

Ellen Vargo, here... happy to be back to share some very clean and simple (read: easy to mass produce!) Christmas cards.  I wanted to come up with a clean design and came up with a very simple use for one of my petal stamps from EEV09, a little grunge paste, fresco paints, and some Christmas sentiments from Lin Brown.

I started by cutting a sheet of heavyweight smoothy card into quarters - we'll be making four card fronts.  Then I mixed up some grunge paste with a tiny bit of Mermaid fresco paint using a palette knife.

I made a simple wavy stencil by cutting some curves on a piece of manila card, and spread a thin layer of the tinted grunge paste over the stencil, creating a snowy hillside.

Remove the wavy stencil and you have a nice clean line.

Here are all four card fronts.  I moved the position of the stencil slightly for each card to create some variety.

Once the first layer was dried, I mixed some more white grunge paste into the first batch for a lighter shade, shifted the position of the stencil and added another layer to our snowy hillside.

I have to admit, the grunge paste came out a little TOO blue for my taste, but by adding a thin layer of metallic glaze we accomplish two things:  1-it tones down the blue and 2- it adds a shimmery layer to the snow.  Winner, winner!

To create our trees, I used a few shades of green fresco paint (I used guacamole, chartreuse and seaweed) and scraped them onto a sheet of white card using an old credit card.  Then I stamped the leaf/petal from EEV09,now a TREE onto the painted card using black archival ink.  I stamped out eight trees (two per card), and then cut them out. 

EEV09

I wanted to add to the shimmer of the card fronts, so I created some shiny silver paper by embossing a large area on the edge of some white card, and then I cut four 1/4" strips to add to each card front.  

All the was left to do was assemble our cards and stamp some Christmas sentiments from Lin Brown's ELB11 and ELB12.  I popped each tree up a bit with some foam squares behind each tree, and drew a straight line for a tree trunk using a ruler and a fine-line black pen.

Here are the finished cards...

ELB11

ELB12.

Hope you enjoyed these clean and (very) simple cards.  They would be quite easy to make in large quantities for your Christmas mailing lists. Hope you decide to give it a go.  Take care 'til next time.

~ ellen.

A huge thankyou to Ellen from all at PaperArtsy for these gorgeous cards. Simple they may be but oh so effective, just love that frosty blue snow. 

We would love you to join in with our monthly challenge. If you are inspired by any of this month's guests who have blogged between Nov 1st 2014 and Nov 30th 2014 then join in and link up your creativity HERE. You will go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. You need to add your link by 19:00 (London time) Nov 30th 2014