The Whimsy & Wonder Suite in the Stampin’ Up! Holiday Catalog uses soft pastel colors in it, but for this Whimsy & Wonder Traditional Christmas Card, I decided to just use the traditional Christmas colors of red and green!
The card base is Garden Green with a layer of Real Red Cardstock. Real Red has been my favorite color forever! If you buy a red somewhere else, like the big box craft store, you will find that their red does not compare to the perfect red of the Stampin’ Up! Real Red! I know because I bought a big package of red cardstock and envelopes when I first started stamping. When I saw how it compared to the Stampin’ Up! Real Red, I threw out the store-bought red paper!
The stamped layer is Shimmery White, my other favorite paper! It has just the slightest glimmer to it and works well with any medium, even some watercoloring. I stamped the tree from the Whimiscal Trees Stamp Set in Garden Green Ink. Old Olive would also look good. Then I overstamped it with the dots to look like little red ornaments or lights on the Christmas tree. I couldn’t resist stamping the holly and berries up in each corner of the card. I just stamped them in Garden Green and then went back in with a Blender Pen and added green ink to the leaves and red ink to the berries. Just very lightly and carefully because I didn’t want the initial stamping to smear.
The greeting is stamped from the Banner Year Stamp Set. It is stamped on Shimmery White and layered on a strip of Real Red, punched at each end with the Lovely Labels Pick a Punch. The greeting itself is popped up on Dimensionals but the Real Red punched piece is adhered directly on the card front. For some embellishment, I added the smallest Gilded Gems to each end of the red piece.
Since the tree doesn’t come with a trunk, I didn’t really like it just floating in the air, so I added a bow with the Real Red 3/8″ Sheer Ribbon. I might have preferred a really narrow ribbon but since this one is sheer, I thought it looked light enough to put in between the tree and the greeting. And since my tree needed a star at the top, I looked through my retired punches and found the right size little punch with a star and punched some Gold Foil.
The lesson here is that even though this stamp set, Whimsical Trees is “whimsical” doesn’t mean you can’t make it “traditional” with color and embellishment! Here is another card I made with the same stamped tree and the new Whimsy & Wonder Specialty Designer Series Paper in the less traditional colors. I love this card as is, but if you are looking for the red and green of Christmas, you can certainly use this tree and change up the colors. If you are looking for a more traditional Christmas card or at least a few for certain people, then try this Whimsy & Wonder Traditional Christmas Card with red and green!
