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.

Buffalo Check Birthday!

One of my best friends turned 30 recently, and is obsessed with buffalo check, so of course, I had to make her a card with the pattern!

I taped off the rectangle on the card with blue painter's tape before using a wide paintbrush with red and black watercolors to create the background. I wanted to ensure the background would pop so I went with a black-and-white skunk from Stinkin' Cute instead of a more colorful creature, and decided to use glitter paper to die-cut the heart it was holding, since my friend loves a little bling! I added a black-and-white party hat from Hats Off to You, sticking with the simple B&W theme from my skunk. The sentiment is from Avery Elle's Party Animal.






My friend is also a big fan of social media and hashtags, so I made sure to incorporate this with the #awesome images inside the card, die-cut and popped up with foam squares, placed around the curvy sentiment from Pizza My Heart. I also kept up the hashtag fun with the envelope liner, using a # stamp from Paper Source. This stamp is my newest obsession for making backgrounds for cards and signs, envelope liners, and I'm sure some wrapping paper soon! The card and liner are from superfine white text-weight Paper Source paper, and the envelope is Paper Source persimmon.

If/when I make another card with the buffalo check background, I'll probably either make a larger card and/or make the checks a little smaller, so there's more of the pattern to see. (I'll also work on my taping and tape-removal, as you can see that the ink bled slightly and the paper ripped a little...)