One Sketch, Two Cards

The current sketch challenge at Christmas Card Throwdown inspired the design for both of my cards:

For my first card, I chose the ornament image from Sunny Studio's "Holiday Style" stamp set. I first used the coordinating dies to cut the ornament & topper 4 times from white cardstock. I placed the negative space in my MISTI stamp positioning tool, & temporarily adhered an ornament & a topper in their respective "holes." I stamped each with the first base color, then replaced them with unstamped die cuts, and stamped with the second base color. I repeated that for all 4 ornaments & toppers. That way, I didn't have to keep repositioning the stamps, which made things much faster. Once the first layer was stamped & dried (so the inks wouldn't blend), I positioned & stamped the second layers as I had with the first. I used Hero Arts Fresh Peach & My Favorite Things Coral Crush inks for the coral ornament; Hero Arts Pool & Memento Teal Zeal for the light blue; Altenew Vanilla Cream & Memento Cantaloupe for the yellow; & finally Memento Danube Blue & Lawn Fawn Deep Sea for the dark blue. For the toppers, I used Hero Arts Soft Granite & Black inks.

I glued each topper to an ornament, so I could maneuver them as one unit. After I adhered the patterned papers to my card base, I roughly positioned the ornaments. I went ahead and tacked them down with ATG adhesive instead of liquid glue, so if I had to move them I could pull them up easily.

I cut a banner from a pale cream cardstock, to echo the yellow ornament and coordinate with the patterned paper strip. I used Lawn Fawn's "Milo's ABCs" to stamp the greeting, using Teal Zeal, Coral Crush, & Deep Sea inks for the words.

 

I positioned the greeting banner, and repositioned the ornaments so everything was a bit more centered. To make sure the ornaments wouldn't detach, I did squirt some liquid glue under each. I tied a triple bow from metallic thread for each ornament & the banner, and glued those in place. After the glue dried, I adhered my card front to a white A2-size card base.

I used Paper Smooches' "A Blessed Christmas" stamp set for my second card. I stamped 3 of the images onto Strathmore Vellum Bristol paper with Simon Says Stamp's Fog ink. After die cutting them with circle dies, I colored each with my Prismacolor colored pencils. To provide a little definition between the circles, I inked around the perimeter of each with Speckled Egg Distress ink. Finally, I stamped my greeting on another scrap of bristol in Gina K Charcoal Brown ink, die cut that into a circle, and inked the perimeter.

I adhered a piece of green "crackle" patterned paper from The Paper Studio to a 7-1/4x4-1/2" white card base. (I have a stash of envelopes for that rather odd card size, so I'm trying to use them up!) I cut a strip from a scrap of holiday paper from my stash and adhered it along the bottom. I created a banner grouping with another piece of that scrap & 2 other scraps.

I positioned my circles in the pattern I wanted, and went ahead & glued them together, so I could move them around as one unit. I positioned my banner grouping at the top of the card, 1/2" in from the right edge. I glued my focal circle unit down with the left edge 1/2" from that edge of the card. And that finished this card!

I'm also entering both cards in 613 Avenue Create's August Challenge: "Anything Goes" (not playing the twist).