CAS Christmas 2

I was still in the zone after World Card Making Day, and the following evening got down to some more crafting! I was so excited to try for the first time my new Martha Stewart border stamps. I'd bought these from QVC when they were the TSV and they were my treat for doing the half marathon. I resisted using them before the race, but then since running it hadn't had an opportunity to sit down and give them a try. My two favourite designs from the 4 had been the snowflakes and the leaf trails, and so these were the two I tried out.

Here is the little stampy setup to line up your stamps.

 It allows you to stamp corner pieces and then the middle pieces. Your paper needs to be multiples of 2 inches for it to marry up, so my first try was 4"x6". Unfortunately I musn't have been exactly right, because you can see a gap in the bottom left corner!

It didn't help that I was stamping this in clear versamark as I was then using my cosmic shimmer mica powders, so I couldn't see where I had stamped very easily!

 Next I went to 4"x4" and this worked much better, and I wasn't paranoid about the ink drying before the mica powder went on. I used a lovely pewter colour which works well. I stamped a Hero Arts Christmas sentiment in the middle to finish it off and then layered onto some navy card and used some straight silver peel offs to finish.

 Next I tried the leaf stamps using forest moss distress inks. I kind of find that distress inks are too watery and pool on some stamps, and sometimes it irritates me, but I think it actually gives a nice effect for these, a little vintage!

I used the same Hero Arts sentiment on this card too as I think it really suits the stamp. I then used my quickie glue pen and some super fine red glitter to make it look like holly. I think it would look really cute with some pearl ones too to look like mistletoe. 

I finished it off by simply sponging the edges with more forest moss and then adding to a cream square card base.

I hope you like my CAS Christmas cards, I'm very tempted to make a batch of these holly leaf ones!!

I'm entering the leaf one into the Less is More eye colour challenge (what with me having green eyes) and both into the Stampendous CAS Christmas card challenge.