Christmas Classic - Process

In formulating my swap for the downline meeting on Thursday, I became fascinated with the process I go through when I'm making a card sometimes and I just thought I'd share the growth of this particular project. I started out with this card by Wendy as my inspiration:(you'll be seeing more cards inspired by Wendy coming up here really soon - she's awesome!).

My first interpretation looked like this:

I used Always Artichoke and a non-SU sentiment on this one. Was kind of dark to me, so I switched out the Always Artichoke for Old Olive and switched to a sentiment from SU and here's what that one looked like:


I just wasn't happy with the background stamp or the sentiment, so I used Versamark on the background stamp instead of Old Olive and I found another sentiment that I could layer and punch. I also wanted to age things a bit, so I sponged the oval and the label punch as well as the stamped image and here's the result:


The sentiment is stamped with Versamark and then embossed with gold but it doesn't show up as well as it really is. This is going to be my swap for this month's downline meeting. This card may go through some more variations (I like the other stamps in this set too), but this is the version that I will be swapping on Thursday.

I know this has been a very long-winded post - Thanks for hanging in there with me. I just wanted to put my process out there and see what you all think. Am I still missing something?

Thanks ~chris