Gorgeous Christmas colours

Sorry for being so late with the post today. To be honest, the reason is all the cards I have made recently were so horrible I couldn't post them. Which got me into a slight panic about what I would post today. Then I sat down and took a deep breath and told myself it's perfectly ok if I don't post anything. Cardmaking is my hobby, and it's supposed to be fun, not a pressure to produce a card per day just to have something to put on the blog. It's ok to make cards and then toss them without never showing them to anyone if they are bad. 

So I walked away from crafting for a while and cleaned out the horrible mess my craft room had become instead. Then I took a browse around the blogosphere to see *if* there was something that would inspire me, not to force myself to make a card. And I found the amazing colour challenge on The Christmas Card Challenges which immediately made me reach for my Copics. With a colour combo like that, who could fail at creating a great card? I was also inspired by this week's Viva La Verve sketch, which I already tried to tackle earlier but failed miserably. I guess the clean craft room inspired me to do a clean and simple design, which involved a lot of masking while stamping, and required a few tries to get right. I'm also participating in The Pink Elephant Challenge where the theme is to use pink and Addicted To Stamps and More where Anything Goes this week.

I used a circular mask to stamp the main image. I made it by die cutting a circle from paper. I started by stamping the bird and the squirrel, then masking them and stamping the trees through the circular mask. I found it helpful to stamp on a test paper first, to see whereabouts I wanted everything to go before doing the "real deal". I used Copics to colour the image. I then stamped the ornaments on another piece of paper, coloured and die cut them. I used a gold sharpie to draw the thread they are hanging from. Last, I heat embossed the sentiment onto beige cardstock in gold and added the die cut holly as a finishing touch. Job done, clean and simple, and finally a card I can publish!

Card: Leonardo Stationery 300 gsm white card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm card, coloured 240 gsm craft card beige
Stamps: Lawn Fawn Joy to the Woods
Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Versamark
Coulouring: Copics C3, E34, E39, R43, RV29, RV34, V04, V09, YG13, YG17, Gold Sharpie
Other: Gold embossing powder, Lawn Fawn Joy to the Woods dies