Gilding Flakes

If you want an effective but fairly quick design for a Christmas card, gilding flakes are a great choice. They look particularly effective on a black background, so for this card I used a super smooth black cardstock to stamp the (specialist) glue, and matted and layered with cream.

"Reindeer Flight"

This Tim Holtz reindeer stamp is one of my all-time favourites and goes well with the PaperArtsy sentiment "may luck and good wishes be yours this year".

 

"Gilding"

After stamping and gilding the main image, I like to add some glue to the border of the card and gild that too.

Of course, today is Remembrance Day and I am thinking of all my relatives who fought in the Second World War. They were all conscripted or "called up" and went to war not because they chose to, but because they had to. My grandfather told me that they all expected to die in the trenches, like so many of the men of the Great War which was little more than 20 years before. Like many men of his generation, they rarely spoke of the things they witnessed, but one night he described to me what happened on his first day in the Army.

They were told to report to a railway station at a particular time, and were transported to a hut in the middle of nowhere. When they arrived it was dark and cold. They had no blankets. He said he was lucky because he had a big coat. They slept on hard benches and he described to me how in the night he heard many of the men crying.

War is not glamorous. We remember in order that it must not happen again.

Entered for the following challenges:
Fashionable Stamping Challenge - Anything But Ink
Sweet Stampin' - Christmas is Coming
Anonymous Stamps - Anything Goes