Cool Yule

This card was pretty fun to make! The layout for it comes from Mojo Monday and the colour scheme from My Favorite Things’ Colour Challenge. Merry Monday asked for a Christmas card featuring outdoor fun, whilst Christmas at Sweet Stampin’ and Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge Extra wanted anything Christmas. Allsorts Challenge Blog is looking for a creature as the feature of the card, whilst TCP Tuesday just asked for anything involving their products. Perfectly Created Chaos wants heat embossing, and Addicted to Stamps and More wants a CAS card. That’s a lot of challenges!

My starting point was my little sentiment panel. I had already decided I would be using the polar bear from TCP’s Polar Holiday stamp set, and I noticed that the large sentiment from that stamp set would fit nicely inside one of the wreaths from a Panduro Hobby set I have. I stamped the wreath first and heat embossed it, then ran it through my Big Shot with a circle die to cut it out. I then stamped the sentiment with some red pigment ink. I used my MISTI so that I could restamp it a couple of times for a crisp impression.

With my sentiment panel done I moved onto my main image panel. I cut a panel to 8cm square and ran my red pigment ink around the edges to add some definition and tie the red in more. As I said I’d already decided to use the fishing polar bear as that was the most relevant stamp I have for the winter activity part of the challenges. I stamped it in MFT Black Licorice Hybrid Ink, again using my MISTI to stamp a couple of times for a crisp impression.

I kept the colouring fairly simple. I coloured the dots on the scarf red and used the same for the little present. I then took a light grey to add shading to the polar bear and a darker grey to be the shadow beneath where he was sitting. Though it’s not one of the requested colours I did add just a hint of blue to the water in the pool to help differentiate it from the surroundings.

As I wasn’t using watercolour paper I had to be very careful with the amount of water I applied when activating my colours in order to not oversaturate the paper. I used plain water for most of it, but decided to use my Wink of Stella on the blue water just to add a bit of shimmer and sparkle to the card.

The image panel seemed a little bit plain so once it had all dried I decided to go back in and add some snowflakes. I used some snowflakes from Pink and Main’s Snow Globe stamp set as well as one from Lawn Fawn’s Merry Messages. I heat embossed these with white embossing powder so that it would be very subtle but still add a little texture and interest to the panel.

The last component I needed was the strip along the card. I changed it up slightly from the sketch as I wanted to use it to help ground my bear. As I’d not used a lot of the grey at that point I decided to use a strip of grey card. I then used my embossing ink to add a pattern with the smaller swirl stamp from the Polar Holiday stamp set. Initially I had been planning on using the same silver-grey embossing powder as I had on the sentiment panel, but once I’d stamped it I decided I liked the way it looked with the subtle watermark effect and so did not emboss it.

 

Finally I just had to assemble the card. I used Tombow Multi Mono Liquid glue to attach all my elements in place. I then decided to add some glossy accents onto the water to give it a bit more shine.

I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out. It’s simple yet I feel quite striking with the pops of red. I really like how the sentiment panel turned out – it almost seems like the wreath was made to hold that sentiment! The polar bear turned out nicely too and I’m happy with how the colouring turned out, even though there was so little of it to be done!

Love,

Lady Joyful