Traditional Christmas

Hello there,

Well, after my 'Blonde' moment with the 'Festive Flowers and Foliage' post, I'm here to redeem myself with some actual stamping!  Fortunately for me, since the post was made, I've managed to purchase the Creative Stamping Magazine which has some fabulous stamps in and I've used them on the card that I'm sharing with you today:

I've gone all traditional on this card and I started by using one of my favourite stamps which is by HamptonArt.  It's not a brand that I'm really familliar with but I purchased it from the PaperMill shop a few years back.   It's a stamp that comes out time and time again and I love it.
Once Santa was in place, I then set about stamping my border with the free stamps from the magazine and a pointsettia  Rubber Tapestry stamp.  The inks used were:

• Impress - Olive Green
• Impress - Emerald
• Memento - Northern Pine
• Memento Rich Cocoa 
• Adirondack - Red Pepper
• Versafine -  Black Onyx

I coloured Santa's hat with a red Stickles glue and made a pompom for his hat out of cotton wool to give dimension.  I then followed the waves in his beard with Ice Stickles to add a little sparkle.
I decided to mount the finished image onto a traditional red card but the edges looked too bare so found out my old wrought iron corner punch which I think has worked really well.
I then used Marriane Pointsettia and Britannia Ivy dies with snippets of card and foil to add some foliage.  I opted for gold, rather than green for the Ivy to give my card the red, gold and green colours of Christmas and to add a touch of luxury. The card was finished by adding a red silk ribbon.

The photograph was taken on my desk in natural sunlight, without a flash and I love the way that it's picked up all of the glitter and the glint of sun on the foil.