FCCB Challenge #189--Christmas Without Red or Green

Happy Monday, everyone!  This week's challenge over at Fantabulous Cricut is to make a Christmas card without using red and green, and our sponsor this week is My Creative Time Stamps.  

It just so happens that I love to make blue and silver Christmas cards, and that was what I had planned for the cards for the shut-in members of our church.  We always put them out at church for the whole congregation to sign, so they have to be big--I always use a full sheet of cardstock which makes a 5.5 x 8.5" card.  I also like to use a very heavy CS for the base.  SU colored CS is fine but if I use white or vanilla I use PTI or Gina K.  I know the cards get displayed so I want them to stand up without sagging.

I used PTI white for the base here, and SU Pool Party, Island Indigo, and Brushed Silver for the layers.   The patterned paper is SU Winter Frost and it is gorgeous!  The photo really doesn't do it justice.  I cut banners of various widths and lengths and layered them.   Now you may be wondering, where is her Cricut cut, required for all FCCB challenges?  Well, I knew I wanted to use the SU single stamp Prince of Peace.  I just love that scripture from Isaiah.  BUT I didn't want to buy the whole set of dies, seeing as how I do have a Cricut.  So I went through the labels in Art Philosophy.  There weren't any that were exactly the right shape, but there is a circle and a label with a shape that I thought would work.  The circle is on page 21 of the handbook, and the label is on p. 47.  Then I measured my stamp.  The circle needed to be 2.4" high to give me a little edge around the stamped design.  Then I measured the corners of the stamp.  They were about 175" high, so I made my label 1.85" high.  Next I unlinked the height from the width so that I could make the the label the appropriate length, which was 2.8", then reset my link so that I could increase the size of my label without changing the proportions so I could make a slightly larger size for my silver layer.  It wasn't PERFECT, but it was pretty darn close.  It takes so much longer to tell how to do it than it does to just do it--it really is easy with a Gypsy or CCR.

Here is a screen shot showing the shapes, so you know I didn't cheat!  After I had my shapes cut out, I used a Stamp-a-ma-Jig to position my stamp over the label.  I heat-embossed the sentiment in silver.  The dry-embossing and scallop edge are SU folders and Edgelits.  The silver ribbon is also from SU.  I heat-embossed an ornate "Merry Christmas" from Our Daily Bread Designs on the inside.

I hope you enjoyed this project!  Please play along with us at FCCB this week.  Just make a Christmas project without using red or green and using at least one Cricut cut and link it up to FCCB!  It's that easy.  You could win a fabulous stamp set from My Creative Time Stamps!