EASY CHRISTMAS CARDS USING FUSSY CUT BITS FROM "TRIMMING THE TREE" DESIGNER SERIES PAPER

 

When I first started working on Christmas cards in September (or was it August), I stamped, cut, and colored a LOT of trees from the Coming Home stamp set.  A handful of the trees ended up in an old stamp case on my table, to which I continued to add unused bits.  Those unused bits consisted of houses and sentiment strips that I had cut from some of the designer papers in the Trimming the Tree collection.  I'm not one to get excited about fussy cutting, but I have to admit that cutting the houses and trees from the DSP was rather relaxing.  I used my paper trimmer to go ahead and cut the Christmas greetings, mostly because I didn't plan to use the other side of that paper, and all of the pre-cut bits were in that one stamp case--all ready to use.

The case is nearly empty after putting to use a lot of the pre-cut bits on cards such as the ones I'm sharing today.  These cards were SO fun and quick to make!  I began by laying out the greetings in the order that I wanted to use them to build my "trees", and then I cut five pieces of 4" x 5-1/4" Whisper White cardstock.  One of the embossing folders that I used on two of the cards (Cable Knit) is retired, but the other one is Winter Snow.  Once my embossed layers were ready, I began the design process by gluing the greeting strips to a 1/4" strip of Early Espresso cardstock.  As you can see from the photos, some of the greeting strip trees were topped with a Gold Glimmer star, and some were topped with one of the fussy cut houses--or both.

A torn strip of Whisper White cardstock was used to create a snowy mound at the base of my trees, and I used stamps from the Festive Post stamp set to decorate that layer using Real Red and Balmy Blue ink.  Before adhering the Whisper White layer to the Night of Navy card, I trimmed the cardstock to fit beside the Mossy Meadow Diagonal Stripe ribbon.  I played around with different arrangements for the ribbon, and my favorite was on the card above . . . straight cut ribbon adhered near the fold.

The Whisper White cardstock layer on the inside of the card was decorated with images from Season Like Christmas and Snow Front stamp sets using Real Red, Soft Sea Foam, and Soft Suede ink.

Not bad for fussy-cut bits from designer paper, huh?  And . . . as you can see in the second photo, I still have two whole sheets of the two designer papers (one with the houses, one with the greetings) that are ready to be cut up and used to make even more cards!