Merry Christmas, Xander!

This is another card for Jennifer McGuire's "card shower." This one is for a little boy, Xander, who has also been battling cancer, and is now under hospice care. It's a bit unconventional, with no Christmas tree, no ornaments, no reindeer, no Santa. But 2 of Xander's loves are paintball and baseball, so that provided the inspiration for my card. The layout came from the sketches My Favorite Things provides for their "Blueprints 15" set, which I used for my die cutting.

I first die cut the larger white panel. I used paint daubers in Twisted Citron and Gold to create my splats. (My original idea was to use red & green, but I don't have a red dauber, and I figured it might end up making mud anyway, since they are complementary colors.) After I got the paint started in the dauber, I sprayed the end lightly with water, then pounced it on my cardstock. I repeated this a few times with each color. I figure that's about as close to paintball splats as I can get! Then I set my panel aside to air dry.

I cut another, smaller white panel for my greeting, and inked the edges with Mowed Lawn Distress ink, for a bit of contrast. I didn't have any holiday greeting stamps that had an appropriate font for this card, though. So I scanned the panel into my computer, and opened that image in Photoshop. I used an old Creating Keepsakes font (with a baseball "theme") for my greeting. After I got the type sized & formatted in Photoshop (using the image of my scanned panel as a guide), I printed it directly on my panel. Then I adhered that panel to my "paintball" splat panel.

I cut a piece of red cardstock to 4.25x5.5", and embossed it with the "Charles" embossing folder by Cricut. Then I stitched around the perimeter twice with black thread on my sewing machine. This provides more contrast, and helps tie in with the black font in the greeting. I actually channeled my inner May Flaum, making the stitched lines wavy. That's really not as easy as doing just a straight line, either! :)

For more gold accents on my card, I painted a scrap of white cardstock with the gold dauber, and die cut the star & banner end (also from "Blueprints 15") from that. I also die cut a stitched circle from a scrap of Strathmore smooth bristol, and inked it with Mowed Lawn. Then I glued the star on that.

Because of the texture on my background from the embossing, I decided to use liquid glue to adhere my main panel. I also glued the gold banner piece so that it peeked out from under the focal panel, and glued the star/circle piece on. I weighed all that down with my two pencil cups on top of acrylic blocks until the glue dried. Finally, I adhered my front panel to a white A2 card base.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Christmas"
Through the Craft Room Door "Anything Goes"