First Christmas Post Of 2020 - Simple Stamped Sentiment Christmas Card

This card measures 6ins x 6ins and uses a bought, pre-scored smooth card blank.

Is this card toooooooo early?  

Well, I think have a reasonably good excuse, despite my making Christmas cards more or less all the year round, when I finally sat down to write them I found that I was a few short! Since I bought my letter "pricing in proportion ruler" from the Post Office I have been wary of making cards with too many layers which would be classed as a large letter and so be even more expensive to post. My multi layered and much embellished cards are generally reserved to be given personally or included in a parcel.

Anyway, it was the thinner cards that I was short of.  To begin with I was all for just buying a couple of packs of cards just to get it done with .......  but then I thought that would be ridiculous, I was just being lazy ....... so I got to thinking.  I already had several packs of pre-score cards, so that was a start and I had a decent sized Docrafts sentiment stamp .........

..... plus, on the couple of occasions when I have actually used it, I have been very impressed by my Tim Holtz stamping platform.......

I had no excuse, I could run up a whole pile of cards in a matter of hours, jump to it girl ..... and yes, using the stamping platform was, again, an absolute dream.

I was simply going to stamp the sentiment, then I got all caught up in my wayward ideas and decided to emboss it using a clear embossing powder, something I haven't done for years!  I loved it, watching the powder "turn" still holds a fascination ...... but, and all answers/solutions gratefully received, the process did warp the red card, what am I doing wrong/how can I stop this?  If I hadn't been in such a hurry I would have put them under a book for a couple of days to flatten them.  However, in a rush, I simply got out my tape gun and although no one else would probably notice the "topper" didn't lie perfectly flat on the silver backing ..... it annoyed me, but not enough to put them all in the bin, as I would have done in the past!

Using a white gel pen I then doodled some stars in a formation that looked roughly symmetrical, although the temptation was to just fill up all the space.

I then added my signature scattering of clusters of three little dots, again I had to restrain myself from going overboard.

The final touch was putting a cross eye inducingly tiny silver flat back gem in the centre of each star.

I think the card has a bit of a retro flavour to it and was really chuffed with how they all turned out.  I love my Tim Holtz stamping platform, as a long time stampaphobic it's completely turned my frustrations with stamping around and as such I have decided to invest in a couple of new ink pads as my original ones are a now little old and not quite as juicy as they should be, so that I can continue my renewed interest ...... but if I also want to continue to emboss I need to learn how to stop the warping!