Christmas Minis

Now that I've gotten so many Thanksgiving cards made, it's time to turn my attention to Christmas cards.  I usually want a LOT of Christmas cards, so I need to get busy with them.  I decided to start by making a couple of mini cards (3" x 3") since I had so much fun with the Thanksgiving ones.  Here is the result.

For this first card I started with a black piece of cardstock, folded it into a card, and then used a stencil (purchased from Paper Wishes) and white dimensional paint to create the focal design.  After the paint dried, I colored the design with metallic cream chalks.  At this point the card looked like this:

It was nice enough, but I decided that adding some greeting stickers would finish it off nicely.  I didn't want silver (which was the color of the only ones I had that ran vertically), so colored them gold by placing them on my craft mat and applying gold ink directly from an ink pad.

For my second card I started with a yellow card (bad choice - this technique seems to look better on a darker background).  As you can see, I outlined some of the features with a black pen to try to give it a bit more contrast.  I used a different stencil (also from Paper Wishes) but used it the same way.  After the focal was done, I added a greeting - this time using a stencil & chalk (pastel chalks this time).  I had tried to leave enough room for a greeting, but the stenciled greeting I found was a bit bigger than I expected.  All in all, it's an okay card, but not quite what I had envisioned: