Hello, and happy Saturday!  This week is “theme week” at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown.  The challenge this week is to create a card depicting Santa Claus (or Father Christmas, or however he is known in your country).  How fun is that?  🙂

I was so looking forward to this challenge until I realized late last week that – GASP – I did not own any Santa stamps.  Seriously.  So, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, which meant that this girl made a trip to Michael’s.  Thankfully, the store had a couple of Christmas stamp sets in stock, and I had a 50% off coupon, and I found a few other things I needed, and it worked out that the amount I saved using the coupon equaled the price of the stamp set I chose.  So it was kind of like getting this stamp set for free.  Gotta love that! 🙂  I thought the whimsical Santa in this stamp set was pretty cute, and the set has several other darling images.

I decided to use the current Inkspirational challenge for the layout of my card.  Although the designer paper isn’t a typical Christmasy print, it came from a wintry/Christmasy Basic Grey paper pad.  I liked the contrast of the light blue with the bright red.  I had made the ribbon bow for a project a long time ago, but didn’t like the way it turned out, so a few weeks ago I tossed the other creation and kept the bow.  It worked out perfectly for this card layout!  As I was playing around with fitting the bow and the focal point on the card, it struck me that the circle with the bow on top resembled a Christmas ornament.  So I thought, why not turn it into an ornament?  I started to cut an ornament hook from silvery cardstock, but that was a disaster.  Then I remembered I had some ornament hooks here in my craft room and as serendipity would have it, they were silver wire (rather than the green vinyl coated ones that we actually use on our tree) so they coordinated nicely.  In order to accommodate the bow without covering up a lot of the image, I had to place the ornament so that Santa was at an angle, and in the midst of all the arranging I decided that the card would look better if I used a mirror image of the layout.  And I also forgot until after I’d photographed the card that I had intended to put the red strip through one of my embossing folders.  Ooops.  But since the hook and the bow provide a bit of bulk, and I had to use dimensional adhesive to attach the circle, it’s probably just as well that I didn’t add even more dimension with embossing.

So, now it’s time for you to go to the 52{C}CT site and check out the great stuff that the rest of the design team has created!  (While you’re at it, I’m sure they’d appreciate any comments you’d like to give them.)  Then make a card showing off ol’ St. Nick, and share it at the 52{C}CT site by noon eastern time Friday, April 26.  We’d love to see what you come up with!  🙂

Supplies:
Stamps: Christmas Characters (Inkadinkado)
Cardstock: Soft Sky, Real Red (Stampin’ Up); Basics White (Papertrey Ink); designer paper from Aspen Frost 6″ x 6″ paper pad (Basic Grey)
Ink: Onyx Black (VersaFine)
Other: markers (Copic); Soft Sky ribbon, dimensionals (SU); ornament hook (source unknown)