Top Note Cardinal - Easy and Elegant

Hi everyone! Yes, I know I've been neglecting you this week, but I promise, I have good reasons. Not only have we had new carpet installed this week in our bedroom, stairs and hallway, but yesterday, we had wood floors and tile installed on the entire main level of our house.

So, my house looks like we are just moving in (my refrigerator is still sitting in my foyer and my half-bath toilet is sitting on the deck! LOL, I wonder what the neighbors think!), I have not one, but TWO big classes this weekend, but Emma stayed home with the flu yesterday! We were both miserable locked up in the basement together - not a pretty picture is it?

Since that is not pretty to think about, I've given you a pretty card to look at instead. In a twist on using my Big Shot Top Note die for this card, I folded my Real Red cardstock first and then opened it up, laid it on the die and ran it thru the machine, effectively creating a window card.

The cardinal from "A Cardinal Christmas" is stamped on a Very Vanilla panel and watercolored with re-inkers and my Aqua-Painter. It's attached to the inside cover of the card. Before I attached the panel, I did two things to jazz up this card.

First, I used the berries stamp from that stamp set and embossed it in Clear EP with Versamark ink. Second, I cut an oval paper mask with my Coluzzle, placed it over the bird image and sponged around it with Creamy Caramel ink.

The beautiful ribbon is from the Holiday Mini Catalog. I used the striped grosgrain from the Alpine Ribbon set. It is tied around the front of the card by punching a tiny slit in the fold edge with my Horizontal Slot punch. The ribbon slips through and then knots on the front. Cool, huh?

Lastly, the sentiment is also from A Cardinal Christmas. It's stamped in Creamy Caramel and edged with the same ink. I punched it out with the Wide Oval Punch and created a background for it by using the same punch twice more with Old Olive cardstock. The three pieces are layered together and attached with dimensionals!

So, there ya go! I hope you like it enough to forgive me for slacking on my posts this week! See ya soon!
Inky hugs,
~~Robin