Vintage Victorian

The card I'm worked on last night is from my Holiday Style Class that I'm in for the next couple of weeks.  They called this card Classic & Elegant, but I call it "Vintage".  Kristina Werner taught this class using a WPLUS9 Stamp Set that was released last month that has a beautiful kind of Victorian Christmas Tree in the set.  While my image does not use a tree, I like the "feel " of this set and it reminds me of a Victorian Christmas.  This stamp set is one that I have had for many years called "No Peeking" from Close To My Heart.  I am so excited to get to actually use it!  The card is done in all gold and brown tones with some of the white space actually left untouched although it doesn't seem white in this picture.  I think that is part of the technique.  It's so vintage and sepia toned and makes you think of days gone by.

I started with a 4.25 x 5.5 inch piece of white 100# card stock.  I stamped the packages first and then the greeting using Versamark with Ranger Ultra Fine Detail Gold Embossing Powder and heat set it.  I was envisioning some pearly white paper with chocolate colored bows so I got out my Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolors which has a white shimmery paint and a couple of different gold paints.  I didn't do any fancy painting here and I actually went over the ribbons using a Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pen in Mid Brown to darken it.

Using a Mini Ink Blending Tool I brought in (with a very light hand) some Crumb Cake Ink first, leaving the center clean and untouched.  Next I brought in some Soft Suede to darken up the outer edges.  I carefully trimmed 1/8th inch off the top and bottom of this panel so it would be slightly smaller than my card base.  For my final touch, I ran my Versamark Ink Pad all along the edges in the DTP method, poured the same Gold Embossing Powder on top of that and heat set it to give the edges a finished look before adhering that to a Chocolate Chip Card Base.  This is one of the simplest Christmas Cards I've made.  I wouldn't do many of them, but it's great to know I can do it quickly if I need to make some extras over what I have ready to go out by then.

I had initially thought I would make all my cards the same, but by now I know that many of them will be one-offs.  That's okay by me and I wont try to design a single card for everyone next year.  After all, I enjoy making cards so much that the more variety I have, the better I like it.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I hope you enjoyed this card and that it inspires you to use stamps that you already have.