Peace This Christmas Card No 3

Hello, Crafters.

Although this is card number 3 in my Peace This Christmas series, the sentiment is the first one I stamped.

I can’t quite remember why I chose not to use it for my first card, but it was ideal for card number 3 although I needed it to be a bit longer.

I started my card with a base of Whisper White Cardstock (CS), then a layer of Garden Green CS and a top layer of Whisper White CS.

I adhered the Garden Green layer to the card base using Tombow.

At this stage, I wasn’t too sure which direction my design was going to take. 

The only idea I had was to stamp some pine branches along one, or two, or three, or four sides, and then to adhere some fussy-cut pinecones and berries! 

I inked the pine branch stamp in Garden Green Ink and stamped the first image in the top right-hand corner. 

Without re-inking, I stamped another image nearby. 

I repeated this all the way down the right-hand side of my top layer until I reached the bottom of the sheet.  

I spent some time arranging the fussy-cut pinecones and berries as well as the sentiment in various ways but I couldn’t come up with any arrangement that looked anything close to pleasing! 
 
I re-inked the pine branches stamp and carried on stamping along the bottom edge, towards the left-hand corner.

Again, I arranged, and rearranged the pinecones and berries, as well as the sentiment.

Then I decided to turn the layer round, so the stamping was now in the top left-hand corner instead of the bottom right-hand corner! 

Then it all started to fall into place, except for the sentiment which was still too short!

I die cut the sentiment using one of the square Stitched Shapes Framelits. 

To get the shape into an oblong, I fitted the framelit back into the stitched holes, with the edge going down he other side that needed stitching/cutting!
 
When I was happy it was in the correct position, I cranked it back through the Big Shot! 

It worked well, except for the little “stitch” lines that are just outside the top of the frame, but it’s so minuscule, I decided it wasn’t enough to worry about. Do you agree? 

I layered the sentiment onto a piece of Garden Green CS and needed to lengthen it somehow. 

I toyed with several ideas of using different DSP’s that had minimal patterns on, strips of Washi Tape, ribbons and finally our 5/8” Burlap Ribbon. 

I decided if I used two strips side by side with the ends fishtailed, it would look like one piece that was 1¼” wide!

I started to adhere the pinecones and berries into position around the stamped border in what I hope is a random pattern!

I adhered the Burlap into position by using Fast Fuse only on the area that would be hidden under the sentiment. 

My final step was to adhere the sentiment using Dimensionsals.
 
I was really chuffed with the result! 

The card is a lot busier than I normally do, but I’m very happy with it. 

I’d appreciate your feedback, please! ☺

That’s about it for today. 

Until tomorrow, happy crafting.
 
JanB.