Christmas Tree Easel

I’ll be honest with you (because I always am) – there’s not a whole lot of technique or a whole lot of challenge in today’s card, BUT there IS a whole lot of simple gorgeousness.  🙂

It’s been a crazy busy week, so I haven’t had time to create new projects, so I’m sharing a project from my Christmas in July Stamp-a-Stack from yesterday.  I designed three cards, and my guests made four of each card.  The room was filled holiday cheer, and the party was attended by seasoned professionals and stampin’ newbies alike.  All were up for the challenge.  All did a great job.  All had a blast!

Here’s one of the cards from yesterday’s event:

I wouldn’t normally include a card with so many layers in a Stamp-a-Stack (I had to cut a lot of paper for the event), but I was so filled with the Holiday Spirit that I just couldn’t help myself!  I was like Santa in his workshop – except I didn’t have any elves to do all the work.  I’ve been working on this card for a while, and I played with at least 15 variations of layers (some too simple, others too busy) before settling on this one.  I think the work paid off!

Helpful hints:

• Play with the layers.  When designing a card, lay out scrap pieces to try different colors and layers.  I tried brighter greens and red.  I tried adding DSP to the face of the card.  I tried adding textures and other images to the background layers.  I even tried adding the sentiment to the face of the card.  My super-secret method for assessing whether it looks good to me is to hold it about arm’s length in front of me and then squint at it for a second and turn my head to the side like a confused dog.  It’s not scientific, but it makes me feel like an artist (or someone who needs reading glasses…)
• Keep it simple.  I think there are four places to add complexity to a card:  images, layers, colors and structure/layout.  In my humble opinion, a card should “go crazy” with no more than two of those categories at a time.  This card keeps a simple, clean look because I only went bananas with the structure and the layers.  Otherwise, there are only two primary colors, and only one image on the face of the card.  I think it achieves a wonderful balance.

I’ll share the step-by-step instructions for how I made the base of the easel card in tomorrow’s post, so please come back!

Stamps:  Lovely as a Tree, More Merry Messages  Inks:  Garden Green, Cherry Cobbler, Crumb Cake Stampin’ Write Marker  Paper:  Garden Green, Cherry Cobbler, Whisper White  Accessories:  Stampin’ Dimensionals

Thanks for stopping by my blog today!

Brian

Do you like this project? Do you want to see more? Please subscribe to my blog by entering your email address in the “subscribe” field. You can buy Stampin’ Up! products from me 24/7 or join my team to earn discounts and benefits with Stampin’ Up! Please contact me at stampwithbrian@gmail.com if you have questions.