phew... made it!

This year's New Years cards started from this paper:
  Yes, i am not normally a fan of orange,
 but it was more like a deep rust and i really liked the interlocking cream circles:
Look closely... mesmerizing, no?
 Plus i had found this super-great stamp -
  love the sentiment and it was only $1
The concept was nice and basic: stamp the words directly onto the awesome textured paper lining it up over top of a circle, add a fabulous round aurora borealis crystal for interest, write 2011 in one of the tiny knots and voila, done!
Simple, crisp and easy.
It was such a good plan that it was doomed to failure.
The wonderful texture of the paper seriously interfered with the stamp. I tried different colors - teal, silver, copper, burgundy, navy and black- in pigment, dye and watermark inks to no avail. You just couldn't read the words.
Okay, if i add just a few steps by punching out a circle in the paper and stamping directly onto the card underneath i could overcome the texture problem. Except that no color looked good with the paper.
 sigh...
Then i finally realized that the paper was 2-sided, with silver on the back.
HAZZAH!
After several trials i decided on bright pink ink for the stamp
(i had to actually stamp the image on to cream paper and then attach it to the card to make sure they were all lined up correctly) because i decided that without a pattern for visual interest i was going to use magenta staples for the number 11:
 
My cool AB crystals didn't match anymore so i returned them, but the cards still needed a little pop, so i went with an assortment of various crystals instead,
  since i like each card to be slightly different.
Though the final product looks almost nothing like the original design, it is still clean and simple (looking at least), but most importantly they were indeed finished (barely) in January!