Tapestry Background Christmas Wreath

The Guest Challenge at the Paper Wishes Message Board for November is to make something with a tapestry background.  You can find a great tutorial for making a tapestry background at Splitcoaststampers. 

As I was getting ready to make a card for this challenge, I discovered that my white ink pad was dry, so I did things a little backward.  I stamped my wreaths first and embossed them with Superfine Embossing powder, then I did the distress ink background and embossed the whole thing again with clear embossing powder.  I love the textured finish.

I stamped another wreath in black for the focal and colored it with red and green smooch ink.  After coloring it, I went over the lines again with a fine tipped Micron pen.  For the corners, I used a gold gel pen and a swirl pattern from the Giant Spiral Card template from Hot Off The Press.

Christmas Ornament Card With String Art

A couple weeks ago, I went into a card making frenzy, mainly because my cousin talked me into attempting to sell my cards at a bazaar.  That turned out to be a total bust.  It was the first year for the bazaar and we had a grand total of about 50 people who showed up.  On the bright side, I’m that much closer to having all my Christmas cards done!  Here is one design I came up with that goes together fairly quickly.

Not wanting to make a whole bunch of identical cards, I came of with several variations so I wouldn’t get bored.  Here’s another one.

I didn’t have a suitable banner die, so I improvised.  I made the banner using the same Nestabilities Labels 2 die that I used for the ornament background.  After making the first cut, I repositioned the die and ran it through again.  The shading is done with Tea Dye distress ink.

I made the ornament with a Cuttlebug  ornament die and cut the centers out using different shaped Nestabilities dies (oval and scalloped oval shown here).  The Cuttlebug die has been discontinued, but I think the Nestabilities Heirloom Ornament would work.

I used a Nestabilities scalloped oval die to cut the shapes for the string art, and centered them under the ornament cut-out.  If you use a round opening, you can also use the Nestabilities pinked circles for the string art.  Here’s one I made using the Blossom die for the opening and the pinked circle for the string art.