Last minute gifts...

I bought some  4x4 card bases last summer, and decided to use a package to make notecards for my mom for Christmas. The pack had 10 off white cards in Lyon paper, which has a silky finish and some texture. I stamped two each of five different images. The elephant tree and sea turtle are from Crafty Individuals and the floral images from Chocolate Baroque. I am entering this project for the the Allsorts challenge ( last minute gifts).

I stamped the Elephant tree with Versamagic inks, and nothing else needed to be done. The other images were stamped with Versafine and coloured with Inktense pencils and a fine waterbrush. I decided to skip backgrounds except for the turtle.

This turtle is my favourite of these cards, I love the colours and the bubble background that is from CB. To make the background subtle and light -but detailed- I inked the stamp using ink blending tools and Distress inks in Faded Jeans and Peeled Paint. I guess another option would have been second generetion stamping, but I always have trouble deciding where to lay the "extra" first stamp (wouldn't like to throw it away...) and I think I would have lost part of the detail.