Evolution of a Christmas Card (Le Belle Vie)

Every year, my CTMH "grandmother" {check her out at kristascreativecorner.blogspot.com} invites her team to put on a Christmas Card Workshop as a Customer Appreciation event to our (collective) customers. I participated in this event before I even became a consultant and I was hooked! This is a massive undertaking and every year it turns out fabulously! This year, we were at maximum capacity. We had 50 guests come for a fun day filled with card making, giveaways, lunch and lots of fun techniques to try out - and lots of new cards to take home and use for Christmas cards.

And every year, I struggle to decide what I'm going to teach. Last year,  I made a gift card but it took me so long to decide what to do I wasn't able to pre-cut and assemble everything I was supposed to ahead of time and I was determined to not let it happen again. I'm glad to say I had everything done the week before but not without weeks of agonizing pain. I just wanted to create a great card for my great customers. I signed up to use Le Belle Vie and Merry & Bright stamp set, the rest was up to me.

Here are a few of my first drafts of the card - you can see I experimented with different cardstocks to see what would look best. The layout I used is from Originals called Lucky Three.



Colonial White base, with Olive mat and Smokey Plum cardstock

Black base, with Olive mat & Smokey Plum cardstock

Colonial White base with Smokey Plum mat & black cardstock

None of these really made me smile when I looked at it so I kept designing. After searching Pinterest (seriously, that site is addicting!) I found a card I did like (here's the original blog post) so I changed up my design. Here's my first draft:

I liked it but when I showed my friends to get their opinions on what embellishment(s) I should use to finish it off I got an answer that stumped me: burlap ribbon. Okay, not my first choice, but if they could see it and I love their work, then this is something I could do. After playing with the burlap for an evening and trying it this way and that, I stumbled on something I loved!

Here is the final design that I taught at the workshop:

I cut the tag for "Merry & Bright" from the Art Philosophy cartridge. I used Smokey Plum for the bird and the berry branches behind the wreath. The wreath was flipped over to use the back side of the stamp in 2nd generation Olive ink then cleaned and reversed on the block to stamp in 1st generation Olive ink directly over top. I used the new Ruby (light) alcohol marker to color in the flowers on the wreath. The wreath and burlap were adhered to the card using Liquid Glass.

This was a fun card to create and teach. Stay tuned this week as I share the other cards we made at the workshop. I will be hosting an all day card class in January where we will do other occasion cards to prepare for the year ahead (more info to come!).