Bah! Humbug! Elegance Challenge

This week at Bah! Humbug! the lovely ladies asked for Elegance. I thought long and hard about this. My original thought was to do something very ornate with opulent embellies and the like. Then I got to thinking that some of the most elegant designs are the simplest (and most difficult for me to make) so I turned to my Cuttlebug again and the simplicity of white on white with gold accents. I enjoyed making my Cuttlebug Spot card this week using my craft knife and a Nesties Labels Thirteen so I set out to do something similar for Christmas. This time I used the Tim Holtz Tall Pines folder, Cuttlebug Snowy Village and the Cuttlebug European Limited Edition Snowflakes folder .

Several people asked how I did the frame so I did a little tutorial here. After embossing I cut around the side of the trees with a craft knife until I could position the Nestie where I wanted it. Then I ran it through my Cuttlebug with one side of the Nestie under the trees to make my frame cut out. I cut on a not so sticky Cricut mat that I no longer use in my Expression when cutting with the craft knife.

I cut a full mat in gold and used the next size Nestie down for the opening. I used the embossed mat to position the Nestie and taped it using removable tape to keep it in position, and ran that through the Cuttlebug to cut, and then also with the embossing mat to add the edge detail.

I decided the top mat looked a bit plain so I decided to double emboss using the Limited Edition Snowflakes folder but in my haste had it upside down so I debossed it. I was in no mood to cut the frame again so I just turned the folder the correct way and ran it through the Cuttlebug another time. This muted the inverted snowflakes, but also the trees so I repositioned the mat carefully in the trees folder to crisp up the embossed trees. WooHoo! Success!

I embossed a smaller piece of white with the Snowy Village folder (discontinued?) and glued it to the card base, then popped each layer for dimension. I added a gold peelie sentiment and further enhanced the embossing with Star Dust Stickles. Simply elegant? Hope you think so!