Chickadee Gift Cards

The last card I made darn near drove me crazy ! I actually felt I owed the dog an apology for the over abundance of bad language she was exposed to. I find that pearls prefer carpet to card, and my eBosser and I are still not good friends. So, of course, when I was asked if I would do another one for my local scrapbooking store, what would I answer but, "No Problem, I'll do one for you". D'OH ! How quickly I forgot what a HUGE pain that card was.
IO's challenge is Holiday Tags, Cards or Gifts. I really had fun with these little gift cards I made. No pearls, and everything fit in my Cuttlebug. I like to think that these are simple easy cards, but I may be delusional, judging from the amount of layers on them, and the amount of die cutting involved. But I didn't use any foam tape, so that makes them qualify as clean and simple in my book! So I made a few.

The bases are SB Captivating Squares, layered with patterned papers. I used two layers of IO Pine Branches (DIE021-N) die cuts, and I coloured and hand cut IO Chickadees ( C8589). That stamp is so cute and they have a die to match, I just don't have it, yet ! I used the Small Bow die ( DIE057-AA) to cut some metallic paper. ( EVERYTHING needs a bit of shine, also found in my rule book !)
I don't have any IO Christmas stamps ( GASP !! ) yet, just great IO dies, but I do have my favourite sentiment stamp set, IO All Occasion II ( CL 307). This is THE stamp set I would recommend to someone just getting started. It's the one set I keep ON my desk. I can pretty much make it work for everything, so I used one of the stamps for my Xmas greeting. I love products that I can get a lot of use out of, essentially I'm a rather practical person.
Note : A seven inch square of paper scored at 2 5/8" makes a 4 1/2 " square envelope, perfect for cards made with these 4 1/4" dies !
You can find the Impression Obsession challenge here :
http://mitrafriant.typepad.com/impression_obsession_news/2013/11/new-io-challenge-holiday-cards-tags-gifts.html