Hi Stampers. Today’s card is a bit of a Flashback Friday. The main cardstock, stamp set (Flourishing Phrases) and ink are all current, but the inside greeting is from a limited release stamp set that was released last year – Merry Patterns. I just wanted to show it off because I thought it came out so pretty. This is a very simple card that still looks very classy. The colors are Merry Merlot and Mossy Meadow.

This card starts with a Merry Merlot card base 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″, scored at 4 1/4″. Next is a 5 1/4″ x 4″ layer of Very Vanilla and a 5 1/2″ x 3/4″ strip of Merry Merlot and another 5 1/2″ x 3/4″ strip of Mossy Meadow. I used the triple banner punch to flag the ends of the two strips and them adhered them to the bottom of the Very Vanilla layer (as shown above) with snail adhesive. The ends of the strips hung over the edge a bit, so I trimmed those off with the paper snips.

The flower from the Stampin’ Up! Flourishing Phrases stamp set was stamped in Merry Merlot ink onto the Very Vanilla layer. It was stamped again onto a post it note and fussy cut out with the paper snips and placed over the flower on my card. I then stamped the leaves in Mossy Meadow ink with the stems on the post it note. When the post it note was removed, the flower appears to be in front. This is called the masking technique. The sentiment is from the Merry Patterns stamp set, but there is another stamp almost the same in the Stampin’ Up! Star of Light stamp set. A gold faceted gem was placed in the center of the flower.

The inside of the card is lined with a 5 1/4″ x 4″ layer of Very Vanilla cardstock. I stamped the flower in the upper left and lower right corner using Merry Merlot ink. This was done before adhering to the card base, with the edge hanging off onto scrap paper. The sentiment used here is no longer available – but isn’t it pretty. Maybe you are lucky and have the Stampin’ Up! Merry Patterns stamp set in your stash. The outline of “season” is stamped in Mossy Meadow ink and then the pattern on the inside is stamped into that outline with Merry Merlot ink.

This card fits in well with a new campaign Stampin’ Up has going called #simplestamping. You will notice this hashtag being used in the next year as part of an effort to show new stampers how fun stamping can be! This card is easy enough for even beginners to do and pretty enough that more experienced stampers may still want to make it – it works great in bulk for those of us running late on our Christmas cards! LOL