Holiday Card #1

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I'm starting Holiday/Christmas cards. Some of the cards will be sets I'll give away to friends and family, others will be one-of-a-kind cards that will go with gifts.

For this first card, I decided to make something that would fit in nicely with the latest Simon Says Stamp Flickr group challenge #4 - which is to use watercolors. It's a bit of a last-minute entry, but it took me a while to decide exactly what I wanted to do.

Since the theme for this week's Wednesday Challenge at Simon Says Stamp is anything goes, I'm adding this card there too.

I started by stamping and Copic coloring The Greeting Farm's Holiday Anya stamp. I used brown hybrid ink to stamp her, which softened her look and made the colors look warmer. There isn't anything particularly different I did with the coloring, though I have to say I'm very happy with how the fuzzy fur turned out. After she was colored in, I cut around her carefully and set her aside to work on the rest of the card.

For my watercolor piece, I used some distress inks - in Salty Ocean, Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire. I smooshed the inks onto my craft sheet and added some water with a spritzer. I made sure the colors blended well together and weren't too splotchy. Once the panel was completely dry, I die-cut it into a rounded rectangle with Blueprints 5 dies.

I created the white frame to go around the watercolor piece by partially die-cutting the rectangle I used for the watercolor piece. I left the bottom of the panel uncut, so I could use Simon Says Stamp's Village dies to create a little scene. I die-cut one of the buildings and the trees at the bottom of the white frame, and used a craft knife to finish cutting the frame.

The card base I chose is a simple kraft standard A2 base (4 1/4 by 5 1/2"), and I chose a piece of patterned paper from Kaisercraft's North Pole paper pad. Since the paper had lovely embossed silver snowflakes on it, I decided to bring more of this silver sparkle to the framed panel.

After prepping the sky with my embossing bag, I used Versamark to stamp a great swirly stars stamp from the new Card kit set - Be Joyful. I heat-embossed the image with Simon Says Stamp's silver detail embossing powder.

I adhered the elements together to the card base, using a combination of dot adhesive and foam tape. As a last touch, I added a couple of white enamel dots to the bottom right of the panel, and scattered a few Simon Says Stamp Crystal Reflections sequins around the silver stars.

Supplies:
The Greeting Farm Holiday Anya stamp
Simon Says Stamp Be Joyful stamp
My Favorite Things Hybrid Ink in Chocolate brown
Tsukineko Versamark ink
Simon Says Stamp Silver Fine Detail embossing powder
Inkadinkado Embossing Magic Powder bag
My Favorite Things Blueprints 5 dies
Simon Says Stamp Village dies
Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor cardstock
Neenah Desert Storm Environmental cardstock in 100#lbs
Neenah Solar White cardstock in 80#lbs
Ranger Distress Inkpads in Salty Ocean, Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire
Kaisercraft North Pole 6.5x6.5 paper pad
Tombow Craft Dot Adhesive (pink)
3M Double-sided foam tape
My Mind's Eye Charmed enamel dots
Simon Says Stamp Crystal Reflections sequins
Ranger Studio Multi-Matte glue
Copics: Skin (E00, E11, E13, E15, R20, R22, 0), Hair (YR23, E35, E37, E29), Dress (R08, R46, R59, R89, B000, B00, BR2, 0, Y11, Y38), Leaves (YG23, YG67, YG99)