Sometimes it is handy to have some cards made up ahead of time! This technique is so easy and lends itself toward cards for differnt occasions. First you want to lay down some low-tack tape at the top and bottom of what will be your colour band to mask off the area. Distress this area with your favourite colour or colours of Distress Inks. In the samples below, you may not be able to see that other images have been stamped tone-on-tone on the colour band. This just adds a bit more interest to that area.

When you are ready to stamp your main image, you will need to pull off the top or the bottom piece of tape, depending on the direction your main stamp is going. In the cards above, the bottom piece of tape has been removed. Stamp your main image in black, and add your salutation in the bottom right-hand corner. These cards would be nice to make as a quick hostess gift. These are also great cards for mailing because there are no embellishments. If you had a number of cards started with the colour band and the image stamped, you could always add the salutation as needed.

We borrowed this card design from Jennifer McGuire's blog. A white panel has been covered with Blueprint Sketch Distress Ink. Then the hydrangea flower from Impression Obsession was white embossed on the panel. The blue colour was removed with water, and some of the Picked Raspberry Distress Ink was added to create the purple shade.

Because of the water reactive nature of Distress Inks, you'll be surprised how much ink you can remove with the water. The leaf has been white embossed and coloured in the same manner.

Creative Medium Metallic and Iridescent are creamy pastes that can be stenciled, spread, or dabbed on for gorgeous texture and colour. The iridescent colours are an interference colour that shows up best on dark backgrounds. A light background colour will leave you with a pearl looking finish and very little colour. You can add drops of pigment reinker to create a two-tone effect, as well as many other options for changing the available colours.

In this page below, we used the Iridescent medium to add tissue paper (which had been coloured with Stazon Inks) to white cardstock.

Here we used the Iridescent Paste coloured with reinker to stencil a busy image. More colour was added with Stazon Inks and Delicata Metallic Inks and some Pico Embellisher for splatter.

Again using a stencil, and some Iridescent Paste, we created the look below. Stazon Ink has been added to the surface as well as Copper Delicata on the black background.

In the design below, we have used one folded card at 4 3/4" x 6 1/2", and a layer that is 4 1/4" x 6". Then we started with low tack tape one inch wide on either side of the layer. Abandoned Coral Distress Ink was used to colour the centre of the panel in varying intensities from dark to light. Stamp the carnation at the bottom of the layer and colour with Abandoned Coral Distress Marker and Peeled Paint Distress Marker. Remove the low-tack tape and use a decorative border die to cut the panel into three pieces as shown. Some decorative clear gems were addded to the layer. Each of the three panel pieces has been lifted with foam tape.

The florals on this set from Friskars are lovely botanical images. You have a poppy, a peony, a carnation, and some differnt buds to choose from. Stamping some flowers this time of year will hopefully get our spirits up looking forward to spring!

Let's get away from Christmas cards for a moment. With the weather the way it's been, we might as well think about fall grapevines. The background in the card below was done with watercolour paper, and Nuances from Magenta. We then used the negative of the die-cut as a stencil, to create the green leaves in the background. We then layered the actual cut-out on top of the other two layers.

The printed paper is from Hot Off the Press. I feel that this paper complemented our watercolour background very nicely. Both the Nuances and the Color Bursts pigmented powders are such fun just on a watercolour bacground. Once you start playing with them, you'll find all kinds of reasons and card designs to incorporate the papers you have produced.

The artwork in this winter-berries stamp even shows you where the berries are frosted! The stamp was stamped in VersaFine Sepia onto white cardstock. We did also stamp a second Majenta stamp of finer branches for more detail and colour. The berries and leaves were coloured with Tombow Markers. We added a bit of Broken China Distress Ink towards the top of the white panel to look like sky.  We then used a glue-pen and Stampendous Chunky White glitter to create the lovely snow-clusters. This stamp is a very practical winter stamp and as it can take you from December thru February, it is not just a Christmas stamp. To finish this card off, we die-cut an Interlace border from Nellie's.

The colour combination of turquoise and red is always one of my favourites. It is retro and modern all the same time!

This card was inspired by a card on Pinterest by Birgit Edblom. I love these pine forest dies. I know you have six million trees, however these are still a very different look than all of our other collections. It is both the size and the clustering that is appealing. The background colouring was achieved by working with Distress Stains. The moon has been coloured with Ranger's Perfect Pearls in Biscotti. Both of the top and bottom white panels have been cut with the Stitched Snowdrifts dies and both pieces have been raised with foam tape. Before any of the white layers were added to the card, the sky was splattered with Biscotti Perfect Pearls.

Any salutation would work for the front of this card. You might want to consider it as a winter birthday card! This would be one of those cards to mass produce if time were of the essence!