A Very Merry Christmas - Christmas Cottage Part 2

After having made 4 cards that had this cottage picture, I was starting to get tired of it (I get bored very quickly!).  Sooooo, I went looking for ideas to help make these next three cards more interesting.  

This first card was the result of a challenge on the PaperWishers Message Board.  We were to use tape - either a decorative tape like Washi tape, or a plain tape to which we added some sort of technique to make it less plain.  I was reminded of a technique I'd done a long time ago with masking tape. I didn't have masking tape, and I took the technique a bit farther than I'd done before, so here is what I did.

I took some brown packing tape (from U-Haul), tore it into little pieces, and covered the front of my card.  Then I took some red ink, and rubbed it all over using a round blending tool (Tim Holtz).  I followed that up with black distress ink - added the same way.  Now the card was covered with ink that was wet and too likely to wipe off.  So, I covered the whole with clear embossing powder and embossed the whole thing.  This gave me a very interesting background for my card:

As you can see from the first picture, when it was time to finish the card, I decided to turn the card the other way for a vertical card.  I cut a white square and used a Spellbinders Die (Fleur De Lis Squares) to cut out the center to form a frame for my focal.  Some ribbon & a greeting from the "Essential book" and I was finished with the front of the card.  (Note: all of these cards have the inside finished, but I don't have pictures of those here.)

As I was searching for inspiration, I came across a couple of cards made by ScrapbookingStation.  I loved the way she took a large focal and set it at an angle on top of another piece of patterned paper with ribbon/bow.   I decided to try something similar. for this one.

This final card in this post was inspired by another challenge on the PaperWishers Message Board.  This one was a sketch challenge using a sketch found on Pintrest.  I used Spellbinders Scalloped Oval die & a regular oval die to cut and mat the focal for this one.  That's seven cards so far from this set - and I'm not done with HALF of the set!