A Merry Christmas quartet for Rudolph day

Well Rudolph day has really crept up on me this month. Tonight we set back our clocks so we get an extra hour of sleep - always assuming we make it to bed on time! I could do with an extra hour and some, in every day right now. However, I have been trying to get ahead with my Christmas cards and, fortunately I kept a little set of four aside, ready for this challenge. I seem to have deleted the photo of the single one I would normally have put here first, and I haven´t the time to do it again, so straight away I will show you the one of the set of four cards that I made.

I used a new Justrite stamp that I bought in a ´specials´order recently. It was complete as you see it here, but I wanted different colours, so after a bit of ´faffing around`, I stamped the whole image with versfine ink and masked off the centre while I embossed the scrolls around the edge with bright gold powder. Then I inked just the centre with rhubarb stalk Memento ink, and stamped it onto snippets of white card, and embossed them with clear powder.

I cut the scroll border and a mat - red card for three, and green mirri-card for the fourth one- using two sizes of my first ever set of dies, the scalloped circle nesties. I used a plain circle die to cut the centre, and I made a mask frame a little smaller than the die, so I could add green ink around the edge of the centre without spoiling the red outer circle. Then I mounted the centres over the scrolled frames and added them to the cards.

Each one is on a 12cm square, white base card, (I know the top left one doesn´t look white, but it is!), a mirri-card mat, (with it´s centre removed because I am very careful with my mirri-card which I can only buy when I have a trip to UK), and then a backing paper taken from a Dovecraft, Back to Basics,  6 x 6 pad. I´ve had it for several years and not used it, but this year I have turned to it several times.

A small gold organza bow added to the top of each one, and that´s four more cards to add to my stack. I have over a hundred ready now, and for the first time ever, they all have their inserts, an envelope  and a label on the back. That was my  best idea  for this year, and I didn´t put any of them away until they were complete and ready to use. I still need to do a couple of batch bakes to reach the total I need, but I don´t feel under pressure like I did last year. So thanks to Sarn, for keeping us up to the mark all year.

Now I will go and link up with the other Rudolph players, and see what they have been making. Join me over at Sarn´s blog, Stamping for Pleasure, and maybe link up a couple of your own Christmas cards too.