1st Christmas Card of 2013!!

I did this card for from the layout challenge at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown and posted it on A.R.T. card challenge website.  My new favorite site.  For those of you who don't know me, I am a Christmas nut! It was a wonderful way to be able to listen to Christmas music in September!

Anyway.... Here is the sketch



As you can see I made some minor changes.  I changed the orientation of the oval and I moved my 3 embellishments to the other side.

I started with a little different idea...

I saw this cool idea where you stencil a design on a paper and then run it through your dry embossing machine.  I used this aspen stencil and then embossed with the cuddlebug snowflake folder.  Then I ran the perfect pearls medium across the raised image and brushed with silver.  The result was really cool.

Next I used a patterned paper from CTMH that looks like barn wood.  Using my Basic George cartridge I cut a 2.25 oval from the paper and then  cut that out to be a quarter inch smaller than the card.                                                                                                                                                      

Then I cut out the Aspen trees that I did and positioned it on the card to show through the oval. I used a corner punch and did each corner and place the patterned paper on the card using pop dots. I puzzled over it for quite a while because I discovered I did not like it as much as I imagined I would.  It was rather flat and did nothing for me.  So.... I spent a rather long time digging around in my stash and trying different things to give it the pizzazz I was wanting.  In the end I decided the Aspens were not going to work.

Now I had a thought.  Last year I saved some of my favorite Christmas cards.... Let's see if I could use something from them.  And Viola!

Add some ribbon from my stash and poinsettia brads from CTMH.  Now we are looking better.  Using the Home décor cartridge I cut a small frame and used the center of it to stamp 'Merry Christmas" and it came out great.  

Best of all I got in several hours of Christmas music!