Another Non-Traditional Christmas Card Color Scheme

 I used the current Color Throwdown #664 color scheme to create another Christmas card. Love pushing myself to create without adhering to a traditional Christmas color scheme.

I got frustrated while making this one & I still see mistakes that kind of bug me, but after putting it down and walking away, I was able to come back to it and finish. Sometimes walking away for 24 hours helps. 

I had never created a card with a floating element before and I actually like how that turned out. The woodgrain background stamp is an older one that I always gravitate to when I need a woodgrain. The eucalyptus leaves & the snowflake are dies from Simon Says Stamp & the sentiment is from there as well. I do love adding sequins to most of my cards, this time it was actually a necessity to cover some splatters that actually ended up on the white background. I also added a few small pearls to help disguise some of the splatters that had run amok. 

Happy with how this one turned out and I learned a lot in the process. Definitely things I would do a little differently design-wise and time-wise, but I'm proud of myself for powering through and not scrapping the whole thing. 

Fall Card

 Made a card today that is larger than my normal A2 size. This one is 5x7 and is landscape. Years ago I bought a large Memory Box wood-mounted pumpkin stamp and matching die. I have used it for all kinds of projects. Today I used it along with The Color Throwdown #662 color scheme of purple, orange, green, and kraft to create a fall card.

I used Carved Pumpkin, Tea Dye, Crushed Olive, Dusty Concord, Victorian Velvet, Seedless Preserves, Peeled Paint, & Rustic Wilderness Distress Inks to blend and watercolor my stamped images. 

I covered a piece of scrap cardstock with pieces of old dictionary paper, inked over it, and then die cut it using the matching die. After stamping, watercoloring, and fussy cutting the images from the Simon Says Stamp Delicate Flowers stamp set, I adhered them & popped them up on top of the pumpkin. I finished the card with a sentiment from the Simon Says Stamp Thanks and Leaves stamp set, some splatters of Perfect Pearls Mist in Heirloom Gold, and a few iridescent sequins.

Christmas Cards 2021

I handmake around 50 Christmas cards each year with our boy's pictures on them to send out to friends and family. Besides those cards, I always end up needing additional Christmas cards to send, so I am trying to get a head start on those. Today I used Freshly Made Sketches #505 sketch to create my first Christmas card of the 2021 holiday season.

For my card, I wanted to go with a less traditional color scheme and ended up with Distress Inks in Evergreen Bough, Speckled Egg, and Iced Spruce. I used water on a large flat paintbrush to wet the entire piece of watercolor cardstock, then I brushed and dabbed each Distress Ink on using a round paintbrush. I made sure to blend the colors where they met. 

Once dry, I edged the watercolor piece with the same Distress Inks & then mounted it on a dark grey sparkly cardstock. The greeting is from a set I picked up at Michael's a few years ago. The large snowflakes were die cut from white cardstock and vellum. There are additional smaller snowflakes that were die cut from vellum as well. It felt a little flat and I wanted to add a little bit of color, so I added a little more texture with Tim Holtz Greens Mini pieces.

I finished the card with some Perfect Pearls mist, Stickles, and a few sequins.

Because I tend to reach for the more traditional reds, greens, and golds when it comes to Christmas cards, it was a lot of fun to step out of that mindset and try something different. I'm going to challenge myself to find other non-traditional color schemes and make cards with those as well.

Simon Says Stamp September Kit on the Month

 I made a few more cards using the SSS September card kit of the month. My goal is to use up most of the consumable products and then move the remains into my card-making/stamp stash.

For this card, I am playing along with The Color Throwdown #660 color challenge. I love the dark, rich colors on the inspiration piece. 

The blues of the background really drew me in, so I decided to stay with a blue & used an old piece of patterned paper in my stash for the background. I stamped and embossed the jar of flowers from the SSS Sunshine Flowers stamp set. Using a wide variety of Distress inks in blues, greens, and oranges, I watercolored the image and then stamped the "Thank You" sentiment from the stamp set. Since I did not get the matching dies in the kit, I fussy cut the image and popped it up onto the navy patterned paper, and adhered it to a gold piece of paper from my stash, then I adhered the whole card front to the green card base. I finished the card with a scattering of small sequins. 

Simon Says Stamp September Kit of the Month

 I have a deep love of sunflowers, so this Sunshine Flowers Simon Says Stamp card kit of the month was perfect. I spent this weekend using the card kit to create some much-needed thank you cards.

For this first card, I used the Freshly Made Sketches #503 sketch.

Using an older square punch I punched out three small squares out of Tim Holtz watercolor cardstock. I used Distress inks and water to loosely watercolor the background and then I spritzed the wet watercolor with Perfect Pearls water. Once dry each square was machine stitched with white thread.

I then stamped the single sunflower image from the SSS Sunshine Flowers stamp set in black ink. Once embossed in clear embossing powder, I then watercolored the image using Distress Inks. The center of the flower was then coated with Walnut Stain Distress Stickles which are sadly a discontinued product from Ranger and Tim Holtz. After fussy-cutting the image, I popped it up on the watercolored squares & added the Tim Holtz Ideology "Thank You" label sticker, and finished the card with a scattering of sequins.

Christmas Card

 Today, I played along with the  Color Throwdown #617. 

This color scheme felt Christmas-y, so that is what I went with, especially since I am still in need of a couple of Christmas cards. This card was a little bit of a test run for our family Christmas card minus the family photo. Still, a few things to figure out, but I'm definitely closer to my final design.

The kraft piece is embossed with a swiss dot design and the edges are embossed with gold embossing powder. I also sprinkled a little embossing powder on the piece and heated it. I like the rough gold edges and the sprinkles of gold on the base. I adhered the kraft piece flat onto a deep red card base. The green piece was created on Tim Holtz watercolor cardstock and Distress Ink blending with Twisted Citron, Shabby Shutters, and Pine Needles inks. The sentiment is from Simon Says Stamps Inside Christmas Greetings stamp set. I splattered it with Perfect Pearls and added embossing powder like I did on the kraft piece. Then, the piece was die cut and adhered with foam tape. The Eucalyptus dies were created much like the sentiment piece, except that more Pine Needles Distress Ink was used and I added Tim Holtz dry glitter with Multi-Matte Medium. I finished the card with some bakers twine from my stash.

Crackling Campfire

Today, I wanted to play with Tim Holtz's newest Distress Ink color- Crackling Campfire. I had seen it ink blended and I knew there was a yellow undertone. I decided to use it as an ombre gradient watercolor. I like how the color deepens as it moves from left to right across the watercolor cardstock. 

I used Freshly Made Sketches #458 as a guide as I created. 

Before I added the Crackling Campfire ink, I heat embossed the feather images in gold embossing powder. Both feather stamps are from an older Cocoa Daisy stamp set. Once I completed the embossing and watercoloring, I added a few water splatters and some Perfect Pearl splatters in Heirloom Gold to the piece. After drying the piece completely I used my fingernail to rough up and distress the edges. Using an ink blending tool, I went around the whole piece with Crackling Campfire ink. I adhered the panel to the kraft card base and added sequins and gold Stickles. The "thankful" sentiment is from an older Technique Tuesday/Ali Edwards stamp set. There is also a crosshatched background peeking out from behind the raised panel. It was created using an older Cocoa Daisy stamp. 

I am already making a list of more techniques to try with this beautiful color.