Holiday Sentiments, Part 1

When I placed an order a few months back with Clearly Besotted, I threw (or clicked...whatever) Holiday Sentiments into my cart. What a smart purchase for me!

I wish all my impulse purchases were that smart.

My friend Joan B has started a series on her blog called Sunday Savings, in which she discusses what she's learned about buying and not buying stamping supplies. Joan is smart (she's a lawyer), and she has also made a lot of mistakes spending money on this hobby...mistakes I have made.

Repeatedly.

It's delightful reading how someone else screws up just like I do, and it's educational reading about how she has tried to do better. You can find last Sunday's installment HERE. I can't wait for next Sunday's installment, which will be titled "Anatomy of the Impulsive Purchase."

Which brings me back to Clearly Besotted's Holiday Sentiments.

It's a very flexible set, mostly words in a couple of different fonts, with a few very clean-and-simple images in different sizes. I've had a delightful time playing around with it and will show five different cards made with this one set, using the stamps in different ways each time.

I have not one single regret about this impulsive purchase and hope this means I'm learning something...after all, I chose to be impulsive at Clearly Besotted, and there's not much that Clearly Besotted puts out that I wouldn't happily own.

And no, they aren't paying me to say that. I just love their stuff.

Today's card features white-on-white layering (gotta use those white scraps!) and a very simple, stacked layout.

The polka-dot font of merry freshens up this stacked layout, along with the alternating layers of red and green...red berries over green holly over red merry over green Christmas. All the white helps the colors pop right off the card.

Note that the berries could easily be brads given that the popped layer would hide the brad butts; however, I used enamel dots. Love those things! But they are very impractical for mass production...brads are much cheaper.

Good thing I rarely do mass production.

Anyway, for inks I can't remember the exact colors I used (and I'm three states away from my craft supplies at the moment, so no way to check), but for this card I intentionally went with a brighter, lighter red than I usually like (been lovin' Hero Arts Red Royal lately...so rich and deep!). Here, however, I wanted to use a more olive-toned medium green for the holly and felt a lighter red would be a bright counter-note to it.

Yep. Works for me!

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at a different stacked layout with a completely different feel.

And to those of you who think of boobs when you read stacked...you must be English majors or have naturally dirty minds.

Because seriously, that's what I thought after I typed it, too.

Supplies
stamps: Clearly Besotted
ink: various
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: enamel dots, dimensionals