Let It Snow

The Christmas card I’m sharing with you today is the result of a large number of challenges! I started with the layout from retrosketches, which went nicely with Daring Cardmakers‘ and The Cats Pajamas‘ challenges to use a tag. I knew from the start I wanted it to be a Christmas card, so included Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge (use a sentiment) and Christmas Challenge Extra (anything Christmas). I also included Craftyhazelnut’s Patterned Paper Challenge. Sweet Stampin’ Christmas wanted glitter and sparkle on a Christmas card which went nicely with Allsorts‘ challenge to use sparkle and shine. The inspiration image from Always Playing With Paper seemed like a good jumping off point so I decided to include that challenge. Lastly I included Pixie’s Snippets Playground, and the anything goes challenge from Simon Says Stamp Wednesday. Whew, that’s a lot of challenges!

I started by considering the elements I wanted to use from the inspiration image. I picked up particularly on the red and white, stripes, and the blue.

I wanted to do red and white stripes for the narrow strip part of the layout. I had a look through my snippets folder for something suitable and eventually remembered (and found!) a piece of red striped vellum which would work nicely. I also found a red tag to use as the tag portion of my card.

Having finally got my hands on white embossing powder, and become more confident with heat embossing in general, I knew I had to use that. Snowflakes were the obvious choice! Initially I was thinking of doing white on white but when I did a test run it didn’t work as well as I would have liked. So instead I found a snippet of pale blue paper, matching the colour in the inspiration image, and trimmed that down to make the two wider background panels.

I put the first blue panel into my MISTI and worked out the positioning of my snowflakes. I used a selection of snowflakes, with the largest ones being by Knorr-Prandell, and the smaller ones being from my new-to-me Snow Globe stamp set from Pink and Main. Once I was happy with the layout I picked up the stamps with the door of the MISTI, prepared my panel with my powder tool, and stamped with my clear sticky ink. I then sprinkled over my white embossing powder (which is Stampendous Detail White) and heat set it. I repeated the process on my other panel, using the same layout of snowflakes.

With my background done I got to work on my tag. Looking over the sentiments I had available to me I decided that the Let It Snow sentiment from the Snow Globe stamp set would work nicely with the card as it was so far. I then decided that I had to use the little snowman from the same set too. I worked out the positioning for the stamps, then heat embossed it using the same process as with the snowflakes.

I wanted to add just a hint of colour to the snowman. I coloured his body with white watercolour pencil. Of course it doesn’t give a full coverage of the paper, but gives an impression of the white. I also went in with an orange on the carrot nose and some red on the hat and scarf. I then went over the white on the body with my Wink of Stella to add some sparkle.

Next I got the bow for the top of the tag. I couldn’t find any twine or ribbon that seemed suitable to use, but I had this red bow in my stash which I’d saved off of a box of chocolates some time ago! It seemed like it would work nicely for my purposes.

Finally I just ha to assemble the card. I used Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue to attached the vellum to the back of one of the blue panels, then the same liquid glue to attach the blue panels in place. For the bow I used some clear tape to hold it onto the back of the tag, then used the Tombow on the back of the tag. I also addded a few bits of Tombow behind the ribbon in a couple of places to help hold it in position. When I went to put the tag onto the card I actually dropped it and smudged the glue onto one of the blue panels. Thankfully I have an adhesive eraser!

I felt like there wasn’t enough shimmer and sparkle, so as a finishing touch I went back in with my Wink of Stella to colour over the snowflakes. It still doesn’t show very well in the pictures though!

I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out. It’s not exactly my usual style but I think it ended up pretty cute! I think it would have been nice to get a bit more white onto the body of the snowman though… Perhaps a different brand of pencil would have worked better. I also think I should perhaps have not used an identical layout of snowflakes on each of the panels, though as the tag hides a big chunk of them it doesn’t matter too much. I could have included a bit more shimmer, too.

Love,

Lady Joyful