A Holly Jolly Christmas - Papertrey Ink October Blog Hop Challenge | CAS Backgrounds

Hey everybody! Can you believe it's exactly one month until Christmas?! It's approaching quickly and I still have a heap of cards and oodles of ideas to share with you before then!

 Today I'm sharing a little CAS duo - and a card that was inspired by PTI's November Blog Hop. I've been working a lot on paring down the layers over the years. And while I'm not quite ready to give up the intricate cards just yet, I am trying to challenge myself to step outside the box a little. So far so good :) 

For today's challenge, I wanted to focus on a single layer background. Plain cardstock seemed a little too vanilla, so I decided to make a dotted and festive one instead! I find this to be such a fun and relaxing technique. And the tools are so simple: just a stencil, an ink blender and some ink. I love the satisfaction I get when I peel back that stencil and reveal whats hiding beneath. It makes me smile every time!

For this background, I used a polka dot stencil (here and here) and three colors of ink (Pale Peony, Saffron Spice, and Vintage Jadeite), alternating the stencil between them. I decided to only ink up every few dots or so, so that there was a bit more white space.

For the focal pieces, I added Altenew's Floral Frame dies, watercolored with some soft peach strokes. I love, love, love these sweet branches - they are so versatile, and act as a perfect backdrop for adding berries, holly, leaves, and tucking in all sorts of trimmings :) Here I added sweet little bits from PTI's Holiday Hugs MIM kit in Pale Peony, Pure Poppy, Pinefeather, and Ocean Tides ink.

The sweet candycanes are what inspired me from PTI's blog hop inspo photo!

For the sentiment, I used PTI's Christmas Critters Sentiments stamps and added a wee candycane heart using Gingerbread Lane stamps and dies.

Keeping things simple, I thought doing a mirror opposite of the branches would be just dandy!

Another thing the PTI photo made me think of is a present tag! So I decided to make one, keeping things super simple again, adding only stamped florals and leaves with PTI's Bitty Blooms (discontinued, but similar here). I used colors of Pure Poppy, Ripe Avocado, Ocean Tides, Smokey Shadow, and Fine Linen. For the sentiment, I used Wplus9's Hand Lettered Holiday die and stamps and the tag base is PTI's Tag Sale #4 die.
____________________________________________________________________
CAS is super hard for me, and if it is for you too, why not try easing in with this simple card background or quick tag!

#letsmakesomethinglovely

If you're not sure what #letsmakesomethinglovely is, check out the intro post here.
____________________________________________________________________

I hope you're getting a kick out of my CAS journey so far :) Thanks so much for visiting and for all of your sweet notes!

SUPPLIES

For your convenience, I've compiled a list featuring products used in the project(s) above. By using affiliate links when you shop, you will be helping to support this blog and exciting new content. Simply click below to go directly to the products, and in doing so, when you shop, I earn a small comission - at no extra cost to you! Yay to a double win!

Thank you so much for your support!