Herringbone Christmas - Stampin' Up! Perfectly Plaid

  Yes, it's another Christmas card in April!  I have peonies blooming, hummingbirds zipping about, and grass that needs to be mowed twice a week and I am making Christmas cards.  Well one card anyway.  The 52 Christmas Card Throwdown challenge had an interesting technique to try out that I have seen in the past but couldn't remember if I had ever tried it (13+ years of cards is hard to remember sometimes).  So I figured why not...there aren't any rules anymore right?  Well besides to stay at home (I'm talking to you Mom!!).

  The herringbone technique is basically just layering your chosen piece of cardstock (I used Very Vanilla for my layer) with narrow strips of patterned paper in a certain way.  There is a good video in the challenge post showing how it's done.  I dug through my DSP scraps and came up with long retired This Christmas DSP to use for my card.

  After getting my background strips arranged and adhered I gave it some texture with the Tin Tile embossing folder.  Since the background is a bit busy I kept the stamping part of the card pretty clean and basic.

  The Perfectly Plaid stamp set from this past Holiday catalog is carrying over to the new catalog so you'll still be able to stamp these cute trees.  I choose the one with open branches and stamped it in Garden Green then colored it in with the dark Mint Macaron Blends.

  The Stitched So Sweetly dies made the layered labels for my tree, an already punched Glimmer paper star in my scrap folder works nicely on top of the tree and retired Very Vanilla seam binding ribbon ties off the center for a little detail.

  Overall this technique is not as fussy as it may first appear and it's a great way to use up those narrow strips that you can't bear to part with and I'm pleased with how my first attempt went.

  Thanks for looking!  Did you stamp today?

Stamps: Perfectly Plaid

Ink: Garden Green

Blends: Mint Macaron dark

Paper: Cherry Cobbler, Verry Vanilla, This Christmas DSP (retired), Copper Glimmer paper (retired)

Accessories: Tin Tile e.f., Subtle e.f., Stitched So Sweetly dies, star punch, seam binding ribbon (retired), dimensionals