Hello! With Halloween behind us, I’m getting ready for Christmas cardmaking. When I made my fall cards, I found that having background options was a useful starting point. I’m taking the same approach for Christmas.
Making backgrounds is also an easy, just-because activity. I don’t have to plan a finished card or figure out how all the pieces will come together. I can enjoy the process without worrying about the result. I started by pulling cardstock in shades of red, green, and blue. In fact, I was so energized by the process that I forgot to label the cardstock as I went along, which created extra work later.
I made samples with background stamps and dry embossing folders, using different cardstock colors. Having these samples together lets me compare stamped patterns and embossed textures and narrow down my choices when planning a card.
Testing the stamps helped me identify ink pads that needed reinking. And if I couldn’t get a stamp to produce a good impression, I left it out of the mix.
If you have lots of supplies and feel overwhelmed by the choices, I recommend a low-effort play day. Try some background stamps, experiment with colors, run cardstock through an embossing folder, and see what happens.
My next step is to inventory the Christmas supplies I own, such as sleigh dies or Santa stamp images, and put those in the front of my bins. I also plan to use my stencils for holiday backgrounds, primarily for snowfall, with blue cardstock. I haven’t swatched those combinations yet, so that’s another experiment on my list. I previously wrote about organizing my supplies in My Embossing Folders Needed a System and Crafting Is an Inventory Problem.
