Prancing Reindeer

My biggest challenge with this card – my first ever attempt at white on white – was that, well, I don’t have a lot of white card at the moment! I know, that’s crazy. What kind of card maker doesn’t have white card. But I’m completely out of prefold card bases, and all the white card I have is snippets and scraps from other projects. So it took me a while to work out what to do with this.

In the end I remembered the white glitter card stock that my in-laws gave me as part of my birthday present. That’ll work! So I cut a piece down and folded it to create my card base, and then started working on creating my elements.

I used another piece of the glitter paper of the same width as the card base to create three hills. I don’t have any hill dies (they’re pretty high on my wishlist!) so I freehand cut them with my craft knife.

Next I took several snippets of the glitter cardstock and used them to cut my trees and clouds. The clouds are the Lawn Fawn Simple Puffy Clouds – I cut two of the smallest and one of the mid-sized die. For the trees I used my Impression Obsession Evergreen Trees dies. Initially I cut them all twice to have two of each size, but I ended up cutting a third of the smallest tree.

I knew I wanted to have a reindeer in the front of my scene, but I don’t have any reindeer dies. I got a bit creative with my solution. I found an appropriate reindeer stamp from the Docrafts Create Christmas Reindeer set, which I hadn’t yet used.

I wanted to stamp it onto the back of the glitter paper so that the lines wouldn’t show after I’d cut it, but I also wanted it to be facing the way it was intended to, and if I stamped it directly it would be mirrored. So I did some mirror stamping – I stamped the image onto a piece of acetate, turned it over onto the back of my cardstock, and pressed it to transfer the ink. The result was a little messy, but it didn’t matter as the lines wouldn’t be visible on the finished project. I fussy cut it out and set it aside with my other elements.

I did also create a sentiment element. Whilst the rules of the white on white challenge do allow for neutral coloured sentiments I really wanted to go all white for this card, which meant any sentiment would really need to be a die cut. I only have one Christmas sentiment die. I did cut that out and liked how it looked, but in the end it just didn’t fit in the scene, so I decided to leave it out.

I considered using foam tape for some of the layers but ended up decided that the layers would have enough dimension without. In the end I just used liquid glue to adhere the layers down. I layered the hills together first, adhering them to each other and then onto the card base. I trimmed off the little bit of overhang from the edge to make them fit perfectly.

Next I added my three clouds. I then played around with positioning for the trees – I used the smallest trees on the back hill and the largest trees at the front, which of course meant the smaller ones went in the middle! I grouped the trees with eachother, and left a bit of a gap in the middle. I did have to pry the hills up very slightly to slip the trees underneath but that was easy enough. I then glued my reindeer onto the card.

The glitter paper is a little difficult to glue onto, so I made sure to put a heavy book on top of the card for a few minutes after everything was glued in place, just to make sure everything stuck. I then trimmed off all the little bits of overhang from the clouds and trees that were along the edge.

I really love how this turned out. It’s so different from anything I’ve done before but it looks really pretty. I think having only glitter card to use was actually a good thing because it adds to the snowy, wintery feel of the card.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

CASology – Forest

Christmas at Sweet Stampin’ – Anything Christmas (It’s not obvious but I did use stamping on this card – as discussed above the reindeer was stamped before it was fussy cut.)

Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge – Anything Christmas and Optional: Feature a Creature

Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge Extra – Anything Christmas

Daring Cardmakers – New (This is the first time I’ve ever done white-on-white, so it’s a new technique to me! Also this is the first time I’ve done mirror stamping.)

Sweet Stampin’ – White on White (Again, I did use stamping though it isn’t immediately apparent. I hope it still counts!)

The Sisterhood of Crafters – Celebrating January: Word Inspiration (Words used as inspiration were winter, cold, frosty.)

Time Out Challenges – Winter and Optional: White on White