Not the usual colour scheme that springs to mind when you think about Christmas I have to admit, but I absolutely love the starkness and simplicity of this card.

It’s a Penny Black, and it’s part of their 2011 Christmas release, but it was sent to me from England from my Mam, who bought this stamp incredibly cheaply at a UK card show, stamped it quite a few times for herself and then posted it to me!  And I love it as you could do so many things with it, either colour it in or, as I did here, keep it simple.

This is another of those cards that’s incredibly sparkly but the camera doesn’t pick it up.  I embossed the image onto a scrap of The Paper Company white card with Judikins Black Diamond embossing powder, which is all glittery and sparkly.  I love this stuff but find that invariably a little bit strays off the image, I think because the glitter in the EP doesn’t always allow the proper EP to stick to the ink as well as it normally would.  Still like it though!  And it might look like the card is matted on to black card, but it isn’t, I employed a trick some of the DT at the Allsorts blog had come up with.  They have a “single layer” challenge going that I wanted to enter but I wanted to have a black edge to my card, so I copied DT Member Emma and used a ruler and a Tsukineko Black Ink Pen to give me a faux matted look!

Card: Recipe:

  • Card: Bank from Michaels ~ Whte card from The Paper Company
  • Stamp: Penny Black Village Christmas ~ Inkadinkado Mini Song Bird (sentiment)
  • Ink: Versamark
  • Embellies: Judikins Black Diamond EP ~ Tsukineko Black Pen

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Challenges:

Christmas Card Challenges ~ Black And White

Allsorts ~ Single Layer

Jules Crafty Snippets Challenge ~ Use up your scraps (OK, so it’s only a single bit of white card and isn’t going to diminish the snippet mountain anytime soon, but it was in the scrap pile!)

Glitter Fairies Challenge ~ Non Traditional Christmas Colours

The Craft Garden ~ Christmas without Red or Green

Divas By Design ~ Monochromatic

Paper Pretties ~ Non Traditional Christmas Colours