Striped joy

My only real plan when I started making these cards was that I wanted to make some striped panels to use as the base. I have a box of card scraps and the smaller bits get cut into randomly sized strips to use on things like this.

I quickly decided that I didn’t want a single solid striped panel, so I cut them into two pieces — making the larger piece slightly shorter than the JOY die-cut — and then joined them together with a piece of coloured vellum.

I played around with different floral die-cuts arranged around the striped panel, but nothing was making me happy so I abandoned that idea. Instead, I chose to stamp the fir tree design above the stripes.

I layered the JOY die-cut with black glitter card over white glossy card so that it would stand out over the stripes, and then added the Merry Christmas sentiment strip over the top.

I often struggle with graphic designs, especially ones that don’t cover the majority of the card, but I’m really happy with how these turned out.

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Lawn Fawn – merry messages
  Visible Image – Christmas Eve
• dies:
  Concord & 9th – joy
• inks:
  Versafine – onyx black
  Ranger Archival – library green
• paper and card:
  Hunkydory Matt-tastic – soft white
  Anita’s pastel vellum
  Ranger – gloss paper
  glitter card – black
  scraps from my stash