O Christmas Tree

Click on photos for larger images. Apologies for the poor quality, because of very poor (non-existent) winter daylight.

I am privileged to be responsible for running the Facebook group for Crafty Individuals, the long-established and very popular British craft company (amongst other things). I have been a huge fan of their stamps and beautiful papers for as long as I can recall, more or less since I started card-making in the early noughties, so I was thrilled to finally have chance to get down to making some Christmas cards with some Crafty Individuals products.

These were part of a batch-making session, using CI-479 (the slightly grungy starry background), which I stamped in Versacolour 'Cool Grey' for some subtlety. Then I stamped Ellie Mulligan's beautiful O Christmas Tree (CI-530) on separate card in Onyx Black Versafine with clear heat embossing and cut it out.

I have been seeing a few black and/or grey themed cards around, which I quite like, so used Black Soot Distress Oxide to blend around the outer sides. Not sure I like it.. possibly a bit dark for Christmas.

I mounted the tree on recycled cardboard for a touch of dimension, and to lighten the mood slightly, I added silver Stickles to the star. an image from Crafty Individuals 'Merry Christmas' Miniatures glossy images pad (matted onto some black card for structure and definition), added some random silver sequins and a computer-generated sentiment.