Christmas Candy

The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge #151 has just gone live and and I'm expecting the gallery to be filling up with loads of festive inspiration - we're really getting close to December now!   This post was scheduled before I left to visit family in Australia - by the time it goes live I'll be enjoying the sunshine (hopefully)!

These peppermint candies (WMS Elf Made) were stamped last year but I never got around to cutting them out and putting them to use.  They resurfaced during a recent tidy up and I thought I'd have a go at making up some quick spinner cards.  I cut them out with a spellbinders circle slightly smaller than the diameter of the candy so I didn't have any border - nothing worse than having an uneven border around  an image IMO and these Spellbinders Nestabilities Circles (the only non-stitched circles I own) are very difficult to work with owing to their large inner border.  I stacked a few plain circles under the stamped image and then coated them with glossy accents for some candy shine and some were sprinkled with glitter for some sugary candy shine!   I found a 12x12 sheet of red gingham DP that made me think of festive table cloths and I cut it into 6 panels and cut spinner tracks into these panels.  I die cut some "Sweet" sentiments (Love2Craft Home Sweet Home set) from red card stock and stamped some "christmas wishes" on some plain white and cut these with a suitable frame (Spellbinders Resplendent Rectangles was a perfect fit) ... and that was as far as my mojo was willing to cooperate!

   I wanted to make up quick cards, but this was waaay too plain so I added some boughs of holly (Sizzix Winter Foliage) to the bottoms half of the panel in an effort to break up the tedium of the design.

Not one of my more inspired cards but a lot of fun to play with!

After sleeping on it, I tried adding a little more holly around the upper sentiment  - it was already stuck down so not a lot I could do with it.

Better ... but still not happy with and I still had 5 other gingham panels, peppermint candies, holly and "Sweet" sentiments ready to go!  So I fiddled and slept on it and fiddled some more ... and this was what I came up with!

I added another two boughs of holly behind that "sweet" sentiment plus a few little single leaves to fill in empty spots.  I also added some shine to the "sweet" with some glossy accents so it didn't get lost in all that green. 

Lots of snippets of green here and even the white for the stamped and die cut sentiments were snippets left over from cutting card bases so I’d like to enter the Snippets Playground Challenge #466!  

I’d also like to enter the following challenges

Merry Little Christmas Challenge #53 - Anything Christmas Goes;

Peace On Earth Challenge #50 - Anything Christmas Goes;

Use Your Stuff Challenge #496 - Anything Goes;

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you go away a little inspired!  Your visits and comments are always a joy and always appreciated!  And the upside of leaving a comment is that I’ll know you were here and how to find you!

Kate