Christmas Chums

It’s hard to believe but I’ve already made nearly 30 Christmas cards since last Christmas, and we’re only half way through the year! And actually that’s probably almost as many as I will need. No harm in having some spares though. To be honest I have way more birthday/new home/new baby/etc cards than I really need because I have so much fun making them. If I’m making a card a day (and often I am) but not sending them out at the same rate… well, no wonder I have such a large collection of them. Perhaps I should start properly looking into selling or donating them (or both!)

I started by stamping out my elements onto a snippet of white card. I believe it is drawing paper from an old sketch book that I dismantled, but my snippet folder has all sorts of white papers mixed up together so I can’t be sure. The bear, moose and floppy hat come from Paper Smooche’s Chubby Chums Pals, and the little bird and other hat are from Chilly Chums. I also stamped and coloured a bow but didn’t end up using it.

I coloured each image with my watercolour pencils and blended the colour out with my Wink of Stella, which added a touch of sparkle at the same time. I added a red chest to the little bird to make it look like a Christmas robin. I went for blue and purple on the hats as I was trying to steer away from the traditional red and green. Once all the colouring was done I fussy cut each image. I then went around the edge of them all with my black sharpie to hide the white core of the paper.

Next I needed to create the chevron strip for my scene. I hunted through my Christmas patterned papers and settled on a dark blue with white stars. I then drew out my chevron on the reverse side (so that I wouldn’t need to erase any pencil lines) and cut it out. Of course then I realised, duh, it’s mirrored because I did it on the back, so it was facing the wrong way… Luckily I had enough of the patterned paper to cut another one, and did manage to get it the right way around this time!

I decided to make my card base from some white glitter card just to add to the festive feel. I used my Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue to adhere the patterned paper chevron to the card base. I then used my glue pen to adhere a hat to each character, and again to adhere the bird and the bear to the card base. For the moose I used foam tape to give him a bit of extra dimension. I adhered them all slightly overlapping the chevron as it helped to ground them.

The final touch was the sentiment. I stamped it directly onto the card base, which was a little tricky given the texture of the glitter card. I used my MISTI and stamped three times to get a crisp impression (and even then it’s not quite perfect). The sentiment comes from Lawn Fawn’s Merry Messages and I masked off the lower portion of the sentiment so that it would just read Merry Christmas.

I’m very pleased with this card. I always enjoy playing with this series of stamps because the characters are just so cute! I think my favourite part of this card is the little robin peeking out of the hat that’s clearly too big for it. Just so adorable!

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Addicted to Stamps and More – Holiday

Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge – Anything Christmas and Optional: Include a Bear

Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge Extra – Anything Christmas

HLS Watercolour Challenge – Anything Goes

Merry Monday – Christmas and Moose (edit – where it was an honourable mention! )

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Anything Goes

Rudolph Days – Anything Christmas

Watercooler Wednesday – Non-Traditional Christmas Colours (edit – where it was chosen as a Watercooler Rocker!)