A new card for a new month

Where did September go?  My day job is at a local university, and I get very busy at the end and start of every academic semester - particularly in the fall.  I haven't had much time for crafting, but I've been quite busy the past week crafting, so I have some great things to share with you in the upcoming month.

This time, I wanted to share a simple card I did for work.  I make thank you notes for an event I run every year, and have to keep these simple since I need to make at least 50 of them every fall.  This is the card I came up for this year:

I wanted to create a lot of depth and character without a lot of layers or embellishments - everything is paper in this card!  The background layer is stamped with one of my favorite go-to stamps - the Oak Branch from Stampscapes.  These stamps are usually used to create scenes, but they can be used for so much more than just scenes.

The foreground image is of the Quincy Mine - a local landmark. Stamper's Paradise makes several sheets of stamps relating to our local area.  I can see Quincy Mine from pretty much everywhere on campus or in town.  You can see it here from a quick shot I took last summer - it's the grey building just to the left of the bridge on the top of the hill.  Paul is standing on some of the new materials used in the construction downtown last year.

Finally, the thanks stamp is from the Perfect Punches stamp set from Stampin' Up!.  I really love their new cling mount stamps - I have been stamping with unmounted stamps for years, and really appreciate the savings in storage space and the less expensive price.  This particular stamp coordinates with the scallop oval punch.

The black strip is just a piece of cardstock.  I love using scraps of paper in place of ribbon.  So, with a little black ink and just a few layers, I think you can make a really cute card.  Here's another card I made using just lots of stamping, but not too many layers to make a cards for a large group.

All of the paper from this project was from Stampin' Up!