Hi Friends! To help spread some holiday cheer, I’ve joined the Hero Arts HeroFest Holiday Cheer Card Drive so you’ll be seeing many of us creating additional holiday cards to support this effort and all the cards will be donated to the Bay Area Rescue Mission in December.
I started this card by loosely water coloring a piece of Strathmore cold press, watercolor paper with Tim Holtz’s Distress Oxide Reinkers in the Stormy Sky and Faded Jeans colors. After the watercolor panel dried, I used the Simon Says Stamp / Stampers Anonymous Stamptember 2022 collaboration release and only used the snowy stencil that was part of this set and applied the Ranger Distress Snowfall Grit Paste over the stencil to add sparkly, snowy goodness to my watercolor panel.
For the Christmas tree, I used the Sizzix Thinlits die set called Layered Christmas Tree (664712) and began cutting out my Christmas tree elements. I used two colors of green cardstock from my stash for the tree and Cardstock Warehouse’s Diamond Print Glitter White cardstock for the snow on the tree. After die cutting the green tree pieces, I took a blending brush and carefully edged the cardstock pieces with Altenew Crisp Dye Ink in the Mountain Pine and Moss colors to give them a bit of dimension. After the ink dried, I glued all the pieces of the lighter green tree parts and the snowy cardstock pieces to the Christmas tree base which made the cutest little Christmas tree for the card.
Using my Trinity Stamps Modern Embossed Rectangle Stack dies, I used the largest die to cut an A2 size piece of navy cardstock and next smaller size die in this set was used to cut my watercolor/stenciled panel so I would have a small navy border around the main portion of the card front. Once I glued those two elements together, I used the Avery Elle Slimline Borders die set and selected the rolling, stitched hill die to cut my snowy ground out of Cardstock Warehouse’s Diamond Print Glitter White cardstock and glued this element to the bottom of the card front. Then I applied the Simon Says Stamp 3D Foam Squares to the back of the Christmas tree and adhered it to the card front.
For the sentiment, I used the Spellbinders Glitter Wishes hot foil plate that said, “Warm & Cozy Wishes”, and the Spellbinders Silver Glimmer Foil to foil the sentiment to a piece of navy cardstock. I then cut my foiled sentiment and a piece of Cardstock Warehouse Stardream Silver cardstock into tags using the Spellbinders Swallowtail Tags die set. To complete the sentiment, I used three strands of DMC Diamant Silver (D415) metallic thread and fed those through the eye of the stacked tags and separated the two tags just a bit and used foam squares to attach them to the top of the card front.
Now I needed to complete my tree decorating. I used the Taylored Expressions’ Rainbow Rhinestones and glued various colors and sizes across my tree to represent ornaments. I loved that the subtle colors of these rhinestones didn’t compete with the snow background yet added a beautiful amount of sparkle and interest to the tree. All that was left was to glue the card front panel to a top folding, A2 size card base and this card was ready to go!
I hope you enjoyed this project and found inspiration to aid you in preparing your own holiday cards. Thank you so much for stopping by to see me - I appreciate you doing so!
Until next time…