The Twelve Days of Christmas (Cards) - Day 1

I have a couple big events coming up in the next couple weeks. The first is my first ever workshop, on November 13, and the second is my Christmas card buffet on November 15. I'm issuing a challenge to myself to get ready for both at once, by making at least one challenge card each day between now and November 13, which just happens to be 12 days. This is so I have a nice display of cards I've made to show at the workshop and also use at the card buffet.

Considering the limitations of the challenge, these cards will most likely be:
1. SUO (Stampin' Up! only)
2. Christmas cards (at least until I've finished the ten designs for the card buffet)
3. On the simpler side - and probably flatter as well, so that they will be easy to mail.

I hope you'll come check out my cards each day, and you are more than welcome to join in the challenge yourself - with whatever sort of Christmas cards you feel like making. And just to make this a little more fun - and to put a little more pressure to myself to keep up with the challenge - I'm going to offer some surprise Christmas blog candy to one randomly chosen stamper who leaves a comment on these cards. I didn't manage to give away any 25K blog candy and now I'm getting close to 30K, so it seemed like the perfect time for some goodies. The blog candy will be "hidden" on one of the twelve posts, so the more comments you leave, the better your chances of winning!

OK, now on to the first card. I know I've seen other cards that use this glittery embossing technique with the Scenic Season stamp set - so I'm not even sure who to credit with the idea. (You can see the glitter better if you click on the photo to enlarge it.) I thought this would be a fun card to make at the buffet and hopefully a wow at the workshop. I also used the Clean and Simple sketch challenge, although I had to fiddle with it a lot because my oval was so large.

I colored the trees on the stamp with a handsome hunter marker and the bird with real red, then stamped onto whisper white and cut out the oval with the scallop oval frame die. Next I took my Versamark pad directly to the paper and embossed right over the image with iridescent ice EP and added the real red frame. The strip of paper comes from the Christmas Cocoa specialty paper in the holiday mini, then I added the sentiment and the frame from Lots of Tags. Finally I adhered the bow, made from ribbon that's also in the mini catalog. (At the card buffet I will make the bow optional if folks are concerned about making sure it's flat for mailing.)