Deck the Halls

Diana Gibbs is hosting a Holiday Mini Swap, 29 demonstrators are participating. The stamp set I selected was "Deck the Halls" when I first saw it I thought it was adorable and welcomed the opportunity to work with it, then it arrived at my house and I had no clue what to do with it. Being the avid blog reader I am I found tons of samples I thought I liked and would be able to CASE, Heather Summers had this adorable card on her blog and thought for sure it would be my inspiration I sat down with my stamp set and various combinations of colored paper and just couldn't get it to look anything like what Heather created. As I was moving things around on the page, Doris said something that got my creative juices flowing (too bad I don't remember what it was- I know it has something to do with a fireplace) with Doris' mystery statement, I was off and running. I remembered reading a blog about how to create a camp fire using punches. Kathy from Texas did a great job sharing the step by step instructions. As a result of Kathy's post I came up with

Funny how I sat down at the table with one design in mind and ended up creating something totally different. I am really happy with the way the card turned out and hope everyone else in the swap will be happy with it too.

Recipe:
Stamp: Deck the Halls
Paper: Chocolate Chip (base) Real Red (fireplace) Very Vanilla (ornaments), More Mustard and Old Olive (ornament hangers)Only Orange (flames) Close to Cocoa (fire logs)
Ink: Real Red, More Mustard, Old Olive, Chocolate Chip (for the logs) and Real Red (to shade the stars)
Punches: Word Window, Large Tag, Large Star, Small Star
Accessories: Twine ribbon from the Holiday Mini, sponge daubers to ink the flames and the fire logs.