More is More...

Happy Tuesday everyone! It was a crazy busy weekend for me and I am just getting myself re-collected after a fabulous weekend at Girl Scout camp. Our entire Girl Scout Service Unit (about 350 girls and adults) was at Camp Agnes Arnold for a weekend filled with crafts, canoeing, archery, smores, too much food and lots of songs and fun! It was so nice to be away from the city, see some fall foliage (a rarity here in Houston!) and feel the cool air.

Our girls shared a treehouse unit with some Cadettes and it was really great to see the interaction between the teens and the tweens- they are growing up so fast and are such wonderful girls!

So onto my "More is More"card! I made the first version of this card for my last stamp class a few weeks back and needed to keep it simple as many of the other cards we were making that night were more complicated. When I looked at the card after the class, I realized I wanted to do a bit more to bring it up a notch and decided to share the two cards as an example of how the addition of a few elements can really bring a card from ordinary to something a bit more!

The card on the left started with a Garden Green base, to which I added a piece of Kraft CS and a strip of patterned paper from the "Merry Moments" Designer paper collection, both of which were sponged with Close to Cocoa ink.  I stamped the wreath from the Yuletide Christmas set in Garden Green and used a Stamp-a-ma-jig to position the stocking exactly in the middle of the oval. The Stamp-a-ma-jig is a great little tool that's worth spending a few moments learning to use- it guarantees perfect positioning of layered elements every time!  The image was layered onto a Night of Navy scalloped oval and adhered to the card over a strip of Real Red dotted ribbon (reverse side) tied with hemp twine. The greeting was stamped on the bottom left corner and some Dew Drops were added to the top left to finish it off. Simple and fast!

The MIM card has a few more elements that I think make it a bit more finished. The Kraft and candy cane striped were stitched together using a zigzag stitch and brown thread, to pickup the color from the stocking, and this piece was layered onto Very Vanilla card stock with dimensionals to make it stand out from the green card base.  I added a layer of red to the main image and sponged all those pieces as well to soften them a bit. The greeting was stamped, cut out using an oval die and sponged before layering onto a vanilla scalloped oval to make it stand out more. I changed the Dew Drops to brown, as there was already more red in this card, and added a brown button on the ribbon.

Two very similar cards with slightly different looks! Leave a comment and vote for your favorite. Better yet, use these cards as an example and go one step further- leave a link to your card to all can enjoy!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

 





Supplies:
Stamps: Yuletide Christmas
Paper: Garden Green, Kraft, Real Red, Night of Navy, Very Vanilla, Merry Moments DP 
Ink: Close to Cocoa, Garden Green
Accessories: Red dotted grosgrain ribbon, hemp twine, Stamp-a-ma-jig, sponges, Sizzix Machine, nested dies, Dew Drops, sewing machine, dimensionals