September 2021

Queen and Co. Happy Holly Days 6×6 Paper Pad

For the 2nd set of Christmas cards I made earlier this summer, I used Queen and Company’s Happy Holly Days paper pad. I’ve had this paper for a couple years and just haven’t gotten around to using it. There’s a lot of red and green, but also some non-traditional brown and beige. Like most Queen and Company paper pads only a few of the prints are holiday/season specific. Several of the papers, like the houndstooth and polka dot prints, could be used for any occasion.

I went with a favorite sketch for the first card. I used the green houndstooth print for the background and the very Christmas-y print for the focal panel. The red banner across the card is another paper from the paper pad, a red tone-on-tone print. Everything is matted in a dark brown cardstock.

The candy cane stripe paper is very cute, but a bit busy. To break up some of the lines, I added 2 Love from Lizi peel-offs in the red mirror color. It’s a small change but made a big difference in the look of the card. For a bit of sparkle I added a few red rhinestones.

For the next card I replaced the circles shown on a card sketch with snowflakes. I used the snowflake dies I purchased last year after Christmas and red mirror cardstock by Recollections. The color coordinated with the red polka dot paper perfectly and added a bit of shine to the card.

I liked the busy Christmas print paired with a muted design. As I was out of the green houndstooth so used the brown tone-on-tone check instead. I also used some of the leftover red polka dot paper for the strip across the card.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the red and green polka dot paper. I didn’t like it as a focal panel but it seemed too busy to use as a background. After flipping through the remaining paper, I tried pairing it with a scrap of the green houndstooth. The houndstooth was “just enough” to break up the busy polka dot print. Since neither paper was a Christmas or winter theme, I added a few red snowflakes and went with a more general Season’s Greetings sentiment.

I am a fan of stripes and really liked the red/green stripe paper, but it was a bit intense. I knew I would need to use it in small doses or with a larger focal panel. I ended up using a very simple layout with the Christmas print paper and a sentiment as the single focal panel.

I made multiples of most of the cards as the paper pad included 4 sheets of each design. It was another good sized batch of cards that I will have ready for donation and for sale at my booth.

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