8 Days of Holiday Cards! Day 7.1 - Another Inky Sky Background!

Okay y'all, I must admit I had so much fun with the Winter Owl, but wasn't as pleased with my sky as I would have liked, so I gave it a second go. I followed the same process for making the Leafy Tree Backdrop and Stitched Hillside scene, but this time decided to color in my lights on the tree with only red and 'white' (which was actually white mixed with yellow), colored in with watercolor pencils, and finished with adding some glitter with a clear glitter pen on top for some shine and sparkle! :)

The background on my previous card had a more even green ombre tone to it, which was nice but didn't look as much like the sky as I wanted it to. This time, I decided to use some purple and blue distress inks blended along the card base, and added the additional step of letting some water droplets (sprayed from a spray bottle) sit on the inks for a bit, then dabbing off the water with a paper towel. I LOVE this technique, as it lifts color from the areas that were wet, giving more dimension to the sky! I finished the sky by stamping the snow from the Snow Cool set with the MISTI tool, using Frost White Pigment Ink and stamping it twice to get my desired look. I added the Santa (made from Gnome Sweet Gnome and Hats Off to You) holding his latte (a clear favorite of mine, from Love You a Latte!) with foam squares for dimension, and was finished with the card, lickety-split! :)

I opted not to use a sentiment on the outside of the card, and used the Warm Wishes from the Love You a Latte set on the inside (but forgot to document with photo evidence!).

I prefer this one to the Winter Owl because there's more contrast in the background and more interest with the water droplet technique, and I loved the red and white lights instead of full color. Both will be sent, though - so that's good! :)

This post is being submitted into the Lawnscaping Challenge #143: Let it Snow!

8 Days of Holiday Cards! Day 7: Christmas lights and inky sky

For today's card, I wanted to create a vibrant sky background, and have the rest of the card be white so the background really pops. I started by preparing the Leafy Tree Backdrop and Stitched Hillside. I have a bunch of 12x12 patterned paper packs that are one-sided, with patterns I don't really plan to ever use, so I actually cut these large papers down so they could go through my Evolution tool and could be used with die cuts, using the opposite side. I wanted them to be bright white, and the non-patterned side was perfect!

In Colorado where I grew up (and still consider my home), people often wrap the beautiful white aspen tree trunks with lights, so I wanted to create a similar effect here, only wrapping the base of these trees. To create the strings of lights, I stamped the lights from the Lawn Fawn Happy Howlidays set on watercolor paper, and cut them out using the coordinating Lawn Cuts. I liked that the die-cut lights had a slightly different white than the tree, as it helped them stand out a bit more. Because these lights are setup for going around the dog images from the set, I cut them apart into two-light strands and three-light strands, so they'd look more natural going around the base of the trees. I ran them through my mini xyron machine to add the adhesive, which is the perfect tool for adding adhesive to small and complicated die cut images. Once I had the trees wrapped, I colored in the lights using distress inks and water. This helped me ensure I had a relatively even distribution of color, and didn't end up with multiple lights of the same color too close together.

On the cover of my Paper Source A2 Superfine White folded card, I used a blending tool to add distress inks, starting from the top with evergreen bough, and blending it down the page, before adding in cracked pistachio and blending down further along the page. I also added Pine Needles ink towards the top of the page, and a little of the  I decided on the background colors by coordinating them with the scarf I used on the Lawn Fawn Winter Owl die-cut image. I kept positioning my card elements on top of the distress ink background in order to determine how much more I needed to add/how far down I wanted the ink to go on the page, which proved to be important and helpful!

Once I was satisfied with the color of the background, I finished it by stamping the falling snow from the Lawn Fawn Snow Cool set with Frost White pigment ink. I added this using the MISTI tool, which allowed me to double-stamp the snow in order to get the look I wanted. I then adhered the hillside and the tree to the card base with my tape runner, stamped the sentiment with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink, and finished the card by attaching my owl with foam squares for dimension.

This post is being submitted into the Lawnscaping Challenge #143: Let it Snow!

8 Days of Holiday Cards! Day 6 - Happy Howlidays

Today, I'm showcasing a set of cards I made with my favorite new stamp set of 2016 - Lawn Fawn's Happy Howlidays exclusive set made for Simon Says Stamp's Stamptember event! Since Penny Hartz joined our family in January, we've been in need of a stamp set that looks like our puppygirl, and we found this one to be close enough to the whippet/terrier mix who has stolen our hearts!When my Stamptember happy mail arrived, I immediately went to town stamping a ton of all of the images from the set on watercolor paper, and coloring them in with watercolor pencils and distress inks until I found the blend that seemed to look close enough to Penny's coloring. I die-cut all of the images with the coordinating Lawn Cuts, and have been getting a lot of use out of them, from slider cards I copied from a sample provided on the Lawn Fawn blog to introduce the set, to fun groupings of dogs celebrating the holidays together, to this super fun set of four cards that also allowed me to use the beautiful Perfectly Plaid Christmas papers. So fun!
For this series, I cut and mounted a piece of the Perfectly Plaid paper down to 4x5.25 inches, and mounted them to Paper Source A2 Paperbag Folded Cards. I blended blue distress ink over a piece of Paper Source Superfine White paper, and added stitched hillsides that I'd cut from the same paper with the Lawn Fawn Stitched Hillside Border dies. Once I'd added the hillsides with my tape runner to the white paper, I used a circle die over the whole piece (the blue background with the hillside attached), which gave me my circles.I then positioned my scenes to determine placement of my sentiments, and used my MISTI stamping tool to stamp the sentiments onto the circles (or onto the perfectly plaid paper, depending on the card). I adhered all of the elements together with tape runner, and my cards were complete! My favorite card was of the puppy carrying the box of lights. I decided to use the Deck the Halls sentiment on this card instead of one from the Happy Howlidays set, since Penny is preparing to deck the halls in this scene. :) 

The slider cards I made with this set (totally copied from Lawn Fawn's own Kelly!) ended up being super fun, too! :)  Since they're heavier and thicker, they will be hand-delivered. I used papers from Let's Bokeh here, and various Paper Source paper colors for these cards, and am super happy with the results.

8 Days of Holiday Cards! Day 4: Santa's Cheers

Welcome Back! Today, I have a fun new technique to EASILY ground your stamped and die-cut images, without having to make an elaborate scene!

When I get new sets, I often search through Pinterest, Lawn Fawn's blog, Flickr groups, Lawnscaping's blog, etc., to find fun ideas for using each set. I'll also stamp and die-cut multiple images, so I have them ready to go when making cards later. I followed this same process with the Hats Off to You and Gnome Sweet Gnome sets, ultimately planning on pairing a santa hat on the gnome to make him Jolly Old St. Nicholas, and, of course, giving him a giant latte to prepare him for his Christmas Eve shenanigans! :) I had a large number of these Santas ready to go, without an idea of what the scene should look like, and then I found an awesome card from another Lawn Fawn fanatic, using a simple technique that I knew would work perfectly with this card!

For the background of this card, I simply used a strip of post-it note tape across the card, and blended Distress Ink with an ink blender up from the post-it note tape line. This makes the line darker closer to the tape line, and lighter as you go up so it eventually fades into the card, giving the impression of a wall behind the die-cut image and a floor below. SUPER SIMPLE, y'all - and makes for a stunning pop of color! I stamped the sentiment with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink, being careful to place it above where the latte would end up so that it has the steam effect. I finished the card by mounting the die cut images with foam squares.

I liked the end result a lot and repeated it for a few cards, but wanted to change it up a bit and use the Cheers sentiment from the Let's Bokeh set. I find that I use the individual words in this set all the time for all different types of projects, and I love the scripted font for the Cheers sentiment specifically. Because it doesn't have the same steam-like effect of the other sentiment, I decided to use it below the images on these additional cards. I was definitely pleased with the results!

Because I loved this ink blended background technique so much, I decided to try it again with another card, and reverse the direction of the blending so it went down instead of up. I used some fun pups from the Lawn Fawn Happy Howlidays limited edition Stamptember set made for Simon Says Stamp, which happen to look like our dog, Penny. :) All of the images in the card below were stamped on watercolor paper and colored with either watercolor pencils or watercolor distress ink. The Santa Paws part of the sentiment was stamped first with red ink, but I didn't like it as much and decided to stamp over it with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink afterward, which unintentionally created the halo effect, so I just went with it. :) All of the cards shown today were on A2 Paper Source Superfine White folded cards.