Mr Cardmaker is a Krafty Devil

Well, 'tis the season to start making those Christmas/Hanukkah cards. Yup, already. I have been scouring the stamp makers' websites, TRYING to find just the right stamps to get into my hot little hands for this year's cards, and I'll be DANGED if there just has not been exactly the right thing come down the pike for me yet. There's been some contenders, and some things are on the short list, but the big thing has yet to come along and blow my skirt up, so to speak.

However!

I do have my stamps from last year, and those puppies never did get enough inking up, for my taste, so I'm back to them for the moment. And the rest of my Christmas stash, don'tcha know...
AND!
I won a challenge over at My Favorite Things a while back, so I did manage to use my prize to grab up the new Hand-Lettered Christmas sentiments stamps. they are wonderfully LARGE sentiments, and I SO dig them.

So, I grabbed some kraft card stock, because I love it (especially for winter cards), and went to town.

I made SIXTEEN of these in one day--and I may even do MORE, I love them so much.
Warning: many photos ahead.

 I used several stamp sets on these cards, mostly Stampin' Up and Stampendous.  Oh, what an impact a white gel pen can make on kraft !
The panels are all cut with Simon Says Stamp stitched rectangle dies. I love the stitched detail.

 These cards are done with SU Warm Wishes stamp set from 2015. I really wish this was still available. Papertrey ink has a set with similar images, though, and theirs has matching dies, which I love. The sequins here are from Neat & Tangled.

 More from the same set, trying to use a tighter focus image(s). Do you love those sentiments, or what? The white heat embossing is so great with them, too!

 This was one where I thought it might be fun to get tricky. I stamped the skis in Early Espresso ink, and the boughs in Soft Suede, and then just smooched the soft suede with a paper towel to soften it up. It's fine, but I decided to stay on the cleaner side, for the most part.

A detail of that idea.

This tree image is from Concord & 9th.  I adore it. My white gel pen turned it into a birch tree. I also grabbed a water brush to move some of the ink around the tree rings a bit. That's about as fancy as I got with these cards...

 Jumbo Snowflakes from Stampendous. I don't know if these are still available. There are so many snowflake stamps available...

Speaking of Stampendous, this stamp is from their Jumbo Cardinals set. There's a ton of white here, but I think the image holds up really well. I SO dig the white holly berries...

I love that you can see how detailed these stamps are here. Repetition is such a fun design idea, too. It always works, and it's usually pretty easy to do.

Snow covered branches is my FAVORITE use for that magic white gel pen on kraft.

The effect is A. MAZE. ING. These trees are from SU Wonderland set, also from last year.

I imagine these sets appear on ebay from time to time, but trees like this are easily found.

Using the smaller accent stamps can make a wonderful impact, too. Don't ignore those babies!

I did have a few flecks of white embossing powder here and there (you may have noticed), but I'm calling it snow and considering it all part of the rustic look I have going on...that works, right?

Hard to believe I pumped these all out in just one (long) day. I love how relatively easy they were to do, and how wonderful brown and white and kraft look together!

Remember you can find me on Instagram @RLBreaks
More to come...

Thanks so much for stopping by!
All Best--
Richard