Sunday, August 16, 2015

Holiday Season Harmony


Since Operation Write Home is no longer accepting cards, I'm starting to focus more on making cards for Send a Smile 4 Kids, and building up my own stash. Challenge #168 at Merry Monday is to make a Christmas card using pastel colors. I came up with this card, inspired by this one I found on Pinterest:


To begin, I stamped one of the images from Hero Arts' "Christmas Crystals" set on a scrap of Strathmore Mixed Media paper, using Versamark ink. I then heat embossed that with Ranger Liquid Platinum embossing powder. I chose 3 colors of Zig Clean Color pens, and colored in the different sections of the crystal. The blue I actually had to scribble off onto an acrylic block, and pick it up with a wet brush, to get the lighter color. After I'd filled in all the sections, I let it dry, then cut it out with my scissors.

I had seen this tutorial by Jennifer McGuire on making your own shimmer paper, so I decided to give it a try on this card. I took a small piece of white cardstock, and applied Spun Sugar Distress ink to it, using the direct-to-paper method. While that was still wet, I spread some PearlEx Sparkle Gold pigment powder over it with a soft brush, then rubbed it with my finger to get a more even coverage. To set the powder, I sprayed water into the air with my mister bottle, and then waved the paper through the mist. Finally, when that had dried, I die cut it with a Lifestyle Crafts "Nesting Scallops" die.

For the background, I cut a piece of mint cardstock to 4x5.25". I used the "A2 Snowflakes" embossing folder by The Paper Studio to emboss just the top portion. I then stamped my greeting, from Hero Arts' "Very Merry Christmas" set, in Versamark below the embossing, and heat embossed that with Liquid Platinum. Then I inserted just the bottom portion of my panel into the folder, and embossed that. I scored a line along the bottom of the top portion and the top of the bottom portion, just to give the embossed areas a finished look.

I glued my crystal to the pink circle, and glued that in place on the background panel. I poked a hole at the top of the crystal, and threaded a holographic metallic thread by Coats through the hole and around the top of the panel, repeating that a few times. Finally, I taped the ends of the thread on the back. For the mat, I heat embossed the right and bottom edges of a 4.25x5.5" piece of white cardstock with Liquid Platinum. I adhered the card front to the upper left corner of my mat piece, then mounted that onto a white A2 card base.

I'm also entering this card in the following challenges:

a2z Scrapbooking's August challenge: "Texture"
A Blog Named Hero's "Metallic" challenge

18 comments:

  1. Absolutely gorgeous!! Love the embossing!! Thanks so much for playing along with us at Merry Monday.

    Deanne :)

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  2. Nice one! A great embossed background with a pretty ornament.

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  3. I never think of using pastel colors for the Winter holidays, but that is a terrific combo of colors.

    So glad you joined us at a2z Scrapbooking for the August challenge.

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  4. I love the snowflake background, and it sets off the pastel ornament so nicely!! Thanks for playing with us at a2z Scrapbooking!!

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  5. I love the soft colors and the snowflake embossing ( it's one of my favorites)! ;-) Thanks for playing along with us for the August a2z scrapbooking challenge!

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  6. this one is so sweet--love this ornament in pastels! thanks for sharing it at a2z!

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  7. what a gorgeous card. Just love the pastel metallic. Thanks for playing with us at a2z this month.

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  8. LOVE This! The void in the embossed section, I don't know why I never thought of that, always thought you needed special embossing folders! Thanks for joining us at a2z Scrapbooking!

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  9. Fun use of the crystal set! Thanks for joining us at a2z Scrapbooking.

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