A-Muse-ing Christmas

I found this really cool challenge blog called Muse, which gives one card per week to inspire other designs. The unique part is that at the end of the week your fellow designers get to vote on who takes the top honors. I really wanted to participate and was excited to see the next Muse inspiration card. 

Then I saw this:

Gulp - Don't get me wrong, I think Therese's card is absolutely brilliant. It's full of sparkly goodness and whimsical Christmas cheer. The problem is - it's so clean and I am so TERRIBLE at clean. That's right. I said it. I'm a dirty kind of girl. ;) 

I was going to just skip this week and participate next week but then I checked myself before I wrecked myself. Why wouldn't I take on something that was challenging for me? So I set out to do clean - Becca style.

Since I couldn't really distress, it meant adding lots of texture. I started by cutting the foundation of my "tree" out of some thin cork ribbon:

 

Next, I looked around for something to add texture. As I was wandering the clearance aisles of Hobby Lobby this week and drooling, I found these really cool things made by Stampendous called Frantage color fragments. They are almost like the texture of little paint chips. I put glue all over the cork, and added the chips, giving it a little ombre down at the bottom.

  

I glued that to some white cardstock, added some colorful embellishments, and stamped my sentiment and voila! 

I'm not about to make this my new design aesthetic, and am so JEALOUS of those talented designers who can pull it off with ease. It looks easy, but to make something seem that effortless is HARD! I have to say, though, I'm loving the texture of this rad tree.

So I'm sending it over to the Muse Challenge and to Just Add Ink's - Just Add Texture challenge. 

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