I haven’t posted in quite a while. The month of December went by so quickly! The Holidays, work and just the business of life made it difficult to post on the blog.

While I love making Christmas cards, by the time the Holiday Season ends, I really need a change.

So my first card of the New Year is something fresh and bright.

As a perk with my Papertrey Ink purchase in December, I received their freebie stamp set, Pretty Petals. It is a small, sweet, graphical stamp set. It’s just the thing to cheer me up and take my mind away from the harsh winter we are heading into here in Chicago.

I stamped the flower and leaf images from the Pretty Petals set in Hawaiian Shores and Simply Chartreuse, respectively, onto an A2-sized piece of Neenah Solar White 80lb cardstock. The center of the flower was stamped in Harvest Gold.  Onyx Black Versafine ink was used to stamp the sentiment. However, after looking at the image, I thought it need a little something to make it less plain, so I stamped dots from a WPlus9 stamp set in the same color ink that I used for the leaves. The dots seemed to make the eye travel across the image. I also added some sparkle to the dots using my Wink of Stella pen in clear.

I later trimmed down the image piece so it would fit as a center panel on an A2-sized woodgrain-embossed piece of cardstock. I love woodgrain embossed cardstock! It adds a bit of texture and dimension to a clean and simple card. I then glued the woodgrain piece to the front of a horizontal, top-folding A2 card base. The card base was made from 110lb Neenah Solar White cardstock.

If this sounds like excessive layering of cardstock, it’s because I like my cards to have a solid feel to them. I think that feeling of solidity is appreciated by the receiver of the card when they hold the card in their hand. Besides, thicker card bases make it easier to prop up the cards when photographing them! That’s just my preference, neither right nor wrong.

Hope this card makes you think of Spring!

 Supplies used in making this card: Stamps: Papertrey Ink Pretty Petals stamp set,  Hero Arts Everyday Sayings (CL342-retired), Borders and Backgrounds 3 stamp set by WPlus9; Inks: Papertrey Inks in Hawaiian Shores, Simply Chartreuse, and Harvest Gold;  Versafine Ink in Onyx Black; Cardstock: Essentials by Ellen Woodgrain Embossed, Neenah Solar White both 110 lb. and 80 lb.; Other: Wink of Stella in Clear.