Inkspirational Challenge #148 - Designer's Choice

I'm so excited to have been asked to be a Guest Designer for the Inkspirational Challenge this week.  I love their themes and this one is no exception.  We're asked to create a Christmas card using only neutral colours.  How fun is that!

I had just received a fun metal die from a lady in Saskatchewan and was dying to use it.  Thinking about it, I knew it would be perfect matched with the images from the Carols of Christmas bundle.  Since the challenge asks for neutrals, I decided to use Crumb Cake for my background.  It's a light enough colour to show off the black and Soft Suede I planned to use but also dark enough to show off the white snowflakes and glitter paper.

The sentiment with the circle around it and those pretty snowflakes is cut with the die I had just received.  Cut in black and then with the snowflakes re-cut from glitter paper, it is striking across the top of the card.  To balance it, I chose to cut my trees from black as well and then cut the little deer from Soft Suede.  For my background I used a piece of Crumb Cake which I first embossed using the Softly Falling embossing folder and then stamped with Craft Whisper White using the snowflakes from the retired White Christmas stamp set.  To "anchor" the deer and trees, I added a scrap of glitter paper left over from another project.  Serendipitously, it was just the right size and resembled a hill.

But as much as I loved the way this turned out, I wanted a bit more for this card and decided it would be an easel card.  I love easels because they stand so well and show off the card beautifully.  This would be a simple standing easel and its base would be Crumb Cake.  For the inside of the card I added a piece of Basic Black onto which I attached another piece of Crumb Cake.  A friend had sent me a lovely Taylored Expressions die which I used for part of the greeting:  Peace.  It cut beautifully from the black cardstock and had a star at the end which I covered over with a star cut from glitter paper.  Once I had glued that to the card, I stamped "it's all about" above it.  Then, with layers of the die cut lines and dots from the Detailed Santa thinlits, also cut from black cardstock, I finished off the inside.  (The layers were necessary to hold the easel in place when the card stood open.)

This was a fun card to make, especially using only neutrals.  I hope you'll check out the samples over at the Inkspirational Challenge.

 I'm also entering this card in the Addicted to Stamps and More challenge #268 which is all about Holidays.