2018 #22 C&S Christmas: Gold with I&D {by Jennie Atkinson}

 2018 Topic 22: Clean and Simple Christmas Ideas

Gold and White, so elegant. Perfect for this topic, and love the touch of dimension too! ~Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Jennie (Live the Dream) with you today, and I am sharing a set of C&S Christmas Cards. 

I will come clean and say that when I volunteered for this theme something in my head said C&S = Christmas. I am not sure what planet I was on that day! Now neither clean or simple are on my go to techniques (I am a really messy crafter!) so I thought I had better google C&S to see what it really did mean - less is more, single layer (oops!), lots of white space, single colour ...... The result is I am a bit of a cross between C&S and C&L (clean and layered!) but I am sure you will give me a little bit of leeway!

Xmas Plate 1

I also wanted to make a set of cards which could be easily pulled together in a production run and thought this wonderful little Ink and the Dog Xmas plate would be perfect.

I started off with the stamp plate and sorted through my dies to see what would fit with the individual square stamps.

If you don't have dies, punches would work just as well. 

Having rescued the Encore Metallic Gold Inkpad from my grandchildren's play box (!) I stamped onto an A4  sheet of Smoothy Regular Cardstock. My smallest poinsettia flower die was  just slightly larger than the baroque square stamp, so I stamped a grid so that I could die cut as many flowers as possible.

Whilst still in the "messy" stage I painted some pearl stick ons with Fresco Finish Acrylic Paints (Gold and Snowflake) At this stage I wasn't sure what colour would work, but it is always handy to have some painted. I added a little Satin Glaze to give them a shine.

I then cleaned the whole table before having a die cutting session. It is always good to have a little pile of pieces to work with rather than cutting as you go.

My cards were cut from Smoothy Heavyweight Card. Recently the PaperArtsy shop had some 12 x 12 scrapbooking Smoothy Heavyweight Card which means you can cut four 6" x 3" cards  from one piece. I used my scoring board to create a few lines on the surface of the card - just to break up the white space a little.

And then it was all about layering - a little gold pen around the edges of the white cardstock gives a nice definition.

The poinsettia flowers were just "plumped" a little with a bone folder. 

I have used foam pads to create the layering, but sticking the squares directly onto the cardstock for ease of posting would work just as well. And if you are very brave ...... you could stamp directly onto the cardstock (just a step too far for me!).

These small sentiment stamps were in my stash and were appropriately sized to match the other elements.

And not forgetting the inside. I cut ordinary printer paper to the right size and then embossed the corners with a punch I bought about 12 years ago. A really good punch to have in one's stash!

It was worth all the effort to pull this set together - I do love the clean look of the white and gold and that everything is square and balanced. By ensuring that I had a set of stamped and die cut elements before assembling the cards meant that I could keep the cardstock (relatively!) clean. The flowers work well in hiding little spots where things went awry!

I really love this Ink and the Dog Christmas stamp plate and there are boundless ways of layering those wonderful squares. I hope too that I have shown that even a hopelessly messy crafter like me can create C&S cards!

As always thank you for joining me.

Blog: Live The Dream

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