Watercooler Wednesday Challenge #146 – Kath’s “All About Christmas” Challenge

It’s time for another Watercooler Wednesday challenge, and this week Christmas is in the air! There’s not long to go now until Christmas is upon us, and we’re accepting all Christmas related entries, so it’s definitely worth coming to play along. My DT card is actually one I started a couple of months ago but wasn’t happy with. I’d had an idea in mind of how it would be, and it just didn’t seem to be going to plan. Luckily I worked out how to fix it, and it was pretty easy to do too!

My starting point was the Christmas Tree stamp from Stampendous. It’s one of the very few wood mounted rubber stamps I have. I generally prefer to use clear stamps, but I really like this one so I had to have it! I stamped it directly onto my card base and heat embossed it with gold embossing powder.

Next I took a plaid stencil from STAMPlorations and held that in place with washi tape over my card base. I think a repositionable spray adhesive would have been a better option, as the stencil kept slipping, particularly where some of the finer areas are. I don’t have any though, so washi tape had to do! I ink blended some Altenew Forest Glades ink through the stencil, then lifted it and turned the stencil so that the lines were running perpendicular to the original lines. I then blended again, this time with Altenew Ruby Red ink.

In hindsight I think I should have done the heat embossing afterwards, as it didn’t resist the ink quite as much as I’d hoped, and it took a bit of elbow grease to move the ink that was sitting on top of the embossing. I then realised that the gold wasn’t showing as well against the background as I’d hoped. Which was the point that I got frustrated and set it aside, because I’d spent so much time fighting with the ink blending that I’d had enough. But I later came back to the project to see how I could salvage it, and had the idea of outlining the stamped image with my white gel pen. It got a bit messy in places when I didn’t follow the line quite as well as I would have liked, but it did the job. The embossing stood out much better than it had before.

I considered adding a sentiment but decided against it as the tree image really fills the card well, and the ink blended background meant there was already quite a lot going on.

Despite the trouble I had with it I’m quite pleased with this card. The ink blending is not smooth but I actually like the texture in this case. It really gives the look of a fleecy plaid(/tartan) blanket, which is perfect for the overall feel of the card. The gold embossing is lovely when the light hits it, and the added white lines keep it from disappearing into the background too much when the light isn’t hitting it.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge – Anything Christmas

Craftyhazelnut’s Christmas Challenge Extra – Anything Christmas

The Paper Players – Warm and Cosy

Watercooler Wednesday Challenge – All About Christmas

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Check out what the rest of the DT made:

Charlotte (that’s me!)

Gail

Heidi

Judy

Kath

Libby

Marsha

Penny