Jolly Old St. Nick

Hi Peeps! 

Are you all in full swing with Christmas projects?  I know that I am!  I was looking through our seasonal stamps and found a few that I had not used on the Advent Tags that I created last month. I was inspired by yesterday being the Feast of St. Nicholas.   I decided to put a couple of these together to create a traditional looking Christmas card. This is how it all started...

The stamps I used are from the Jolly Old St. Nick cling set. I used walnut stain distress ink to stamp the images on some blank manila tags, and then proceeded to ink them with my ink blending tool and shades of red and green distress inks, plus a touch of vintage photo and a little more walnut stain. As I was inking the little Santa, I thought the ink was getting too intense, so I used a damp paper towel, and dabbed at the center of the image.  Since water reacts with distress inks, I was able to lift some of the color, and in turn, I really like the effect. I will definitely remember this one in the future. The images were cut with a Spellbinders oval and scallop oval die, and a Stampin' Up punch. I found the dark brown solid (Echo Park) and the green pattern paper in my stash and thought they would be a nice contrast to the images and the Crumb Cake cardstock. My Cherry Cobbler ribbon (SU!) is darker, but my other red ribbons seemed too bright, and this one had a better width and makes pretty bows. And you know, it's all about the bow!

I added the two images to the card with some foam dimensionals (SU!) and as you can see here, I double stacked them on the Santa so it would sit taller than the tree image.  Then, its just a matter of assembling the pieces and tying a sweet little bow.

Don't you love it when a card comes together that easily??  I know I do.  This layout is one that I know I will be using again.  It is easy to replicate which makes it good for creating multiple Christmas cards. Even though the ribbon is darker, I think it works since the images are stamped in a darker ink and the color is more intense around the edges. This card makes me happy!

Have a great weekend!



Julie