Today I'm sharing my design team card for our new challenge over at As you See It where it's time for a speed challenge chosen by Deborah:

Shades of green - perfect for the festive season and more besides! I am ramping up my Christmas card making and whilst I considered some simple speed stamping, I thought the Sunday Stamps layout would be perfect for showcasing some busy designer series paper - always a good time-saver when you need to make a quick card! So I searched through my Christmas DSP collection and this is what I came up with:

 Here's the low-down on today's card:

This watercoloured foliage pattern is one of my favourites in the retired Joy of Christmas paper pack: it showcases several shades of green and a pop of festive red from those berries too. I covered the whole of the base of my card, grabbed a few leftover scraps of foil and foiled vellum to cut my banners and some additional scraps to diecut some foliage to create a topper for my banners, all tied with some retired silver twine. The final touch was a sentiment from the Magical Christmas Foil Dies that I had already foiled in Silver Opal and diecut - all I needed to do was fish through my box of finished sentiments to find something suitable:

A few clear epoxy droplets and some hasty dots on my berries with a white gel pen complete my card.

So how long did this take me? 

A total of 9 minutes and 29 seconds - longer than I thought it would. It's surprising how much time you can spend poking out diecuts and tying bows!! It's a good job that I had my sentiment already foiled for sure, otherwise it would have been a straightforward 'ink and stick'! Having made this card, I decided to make a few more in a similar design using up some other paper, including this photographic design from the retired All Is Bright papers:

This time I went with gold accents and a reverse-foiled sentiment on Garden Green, and added a couple of tiny jingle bells to my twine bow:

It's quite tricky to see the detail of the foiling on the sentiment - any and all tips as to the best way to photograph foiling, especially on a dark background, are welcome! I can assure you it does look lovely in real life. I often find these kinds of photographic papers quite difficult to work with, but I'm quite pleased with this finished card.

Here's a summary of our challenge rules:

• Create any card, scrapbooking page, 3D or packaging project that fits the challenge.
• For a Speed Stamping Challenge you must tell us the time it took to make your project and it must be finished in under 10 min.
• Please include the challenge graphic and link back to the challenge in your post.
• Make sure you link the specific post and not the whole blog to the Linky. Use AYSI#(insert challenge number) when uploading to a public gallery
• Please turn off word verification so that we can send you lots of feedback.
• You can combine our challenge with up to 3 other compatible challenges. 
• We do reserve the right to delete, or not consider for Top Pick and Featured Artist, entries that do not comply with these guidelines.

Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Today I'm sharing my design team card for our new challenge over at As you See It where it's time for an interesting 'fill in the blank' challenge from Heather C:

Vellum - so many creative things you can do with it and the Design Team will be sharing lots of them for this challenge. One of my favourite things to do with vellum is ... to dry emboss it! I made a Christmas card using the colours over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown this week that showcases embossed vellum in all its glory - take a look:

Here's the low-down on today's card:

For my card today, I created a faux bookbinding card. I embossed a whole sheet of vellum using the Christmas Tidings embossing folder and attached it along the edge beneath my binding edge - this is a useful way to avoid visible adhesive, which is something you need to think about when working with vellum. This embossing folder has lots of festive words and images and I chose to highlight the gingerbread man (you can see him near the bind) and add a couple of stamped gingerbread men to my card. I stamped them in Pecan Pie using a long-retired set, 'Scentsational Season', and added bows from 'Cookie Cutter Christmas' (also retired). I've included the link to a current set with a cute gingerbread man in below, in case you don't have one in your collection. You can see mine more closely below - they provide a nice contrast to the fabulous dimension and texture of the embossed vellum:

I added another gingerbread man and a sentiment from 'Joy to You' to the inside of my card too:

You might also notice on the photo above that I embossed the envelope flap too for a co-ordinated look. I love to decorate envelopes in this way - it's super simple and so effective.

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

Here's a summary of our challenge rules:

• Create any card, scrapbooking page, 3D project or packaging project that fits the challenge.
• Please include the challenge graphic and link back to the challenge in your blog post. Turn off word verification so we can leave you lots of lovely comments. Make sure you link the post not the whole blog to the Linky. Use #AYSIXXX when uploading to a public gallery.
• If you’re unsure about ‘the rules’, check the details under the Challenge Guidelines tab on the As You See It Challenge homepage.
• In a Fill in the Blank challenge, complete the sentence in the Challenge Banner with the phrase that is true for you and create your project using the words you used. Tell us what you said in your blog or on your site.

Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

CHRISTMAS TIDINGS EMBOSSING FOLDER (8.00)	VELLUM A4 CARDSTOCK (9.50)	REAL RED A4 CARDSTOCK (9.50)	REAL RED CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (8.50)	PECAN PIE CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (8.50)	SENDING CHEER BUNDLE (ENGLISH) (50.25)
JOY TO YOU CLING STAMP SET (ENGLISH) (23.00)	BASIC WHITE A4 CARDSTOCK (10.00)