I’m back on the Seven Hills Crafts blog again today with this cute, clean and simple one layer Christmas card featuring the Santa Bear stamp set from Avery Elle. I really am loving these simple designs as I get to practice my colouring and use some of those Christmas sets that haven’t gotten as much use as they probably should have!

This one is ridiculously easy if you like colouring – it’s only got two steps! Well, three if you include adhering the finished card panel to a card base.

I started out with an A6 panel of white blending card stock and stamped out the cute little Santa Bear (don’t you just love his beard?) and his bunny onto the top centre section of the card. I used some MFT Extreme Black ink so it wouldn’t smudge or bleed with my alcohol markers. Just a tip – if you’re using a lot of markers that have high colourless blender contents (e.g. closer to the 00s for Copics or 0s for Spectrum Noirs), you may wish to heat set the ink or leave it for good while to really let the ink set. I find it can smudge sometimes if you don’t.

I then coloured the scene in with my alcohol markers. I paid special attention to the lighting – a top left light source – to give some extra dimension to this simple one layer card. If you’ve got an area that would really be in darkness but you want to make sure it’s differentiated (e.g. for his front arm), use a little reflected light by leaving a small slice free of your darker markers.

Once finished, I stamped out the main sentiment from the set along the bottom of the scene and it’s finished!