Merry Monday Guest Designer This Week

Hi all,

I'm SOOOO excited to be included with Leslie and the Merry Monday design team this week as the "guest designer".  It's definitely an honor.

The theme for this week's challenge is to make a "Chalkboard" look card. I love the process of making this style of card so I was very pleased to see it's this week's challenge.

I pulled out a few of my Taylored Expressions holiday stamp sets and used a mixture of greetings and pictures. My technique when doing this type of card is to stamp it all out on a scrap piece of paper in the size of my finished piece. I just stamp everything in black on the scrap paper, mostly working on the spacing to make sure it looks right. Then, I get my black card stock, dust it with the anti-static powder and stamp from the top to the bottom. I will do a horizontal line of stamping, then pour the EP over so the ink doesn't dry out. Then on to the next line. I don't heat until the entire card is done.

I used some colored pencils to add a little color to the stars and holly. Then swiped  a sponge dauber across various areas with craft white ink. All pretty easy, just need to take the time to get the spacing correct. I kept the rest of the embellishments pretty simple so that the stamping remains the focus.

Supplies
Stamps: Various stamps from these Taylored Expressions sets: Sparkle and Cheer, Banner Holidays,  and Winter Wonderland
Paper: SU black, Gumball Green and Real Red card stock and Echo Park Holly Jolly Christmas patterned paper
Ink: Versamark and SU Craft white
Other: SU white embossing powder, colored pencils, SU sponge dauber, sequins, SU wood grain EF, the Big Shot, and dimensionals

What a fun card this was to make! If you haven't done one of these, give it a try.

Thanks again to the girls at Merry Monday and thanks all for looking in,
Colleen