Hello, Handsome Snowman

The Our Daily Bread Designs challenge at Operation Write Home for October is to make a non-holiday card with snowflakes. I had trouble thinking of something to make, and finally decided to go through my "winter" stamps. I found this one of the snowman with the little birdie on his nose (source unknown), and felt it would be perfect. I also perused my non-holiday greeting stamps, and found the one I used in this Hero Arts set.

I next looked through my binder of OWH sketches, and found this one:

I liked the idea of the oval for the snowman image, since it had that basic shape to start with. I just had to rotate the sketch 90 degrees counter-clockwise, and move the oval up to make the design work.

I saw this video by Gina K. on YouTube today, on doing letterpress with an embossing folder and ink pad. So I decided to try that on this card. I've done this before, but with spotty results. This time, I think it came out quite well! I used the "Snowflake Swirl" embossing folder by Darice, and Memento Summer Sky dye ink. I spread the ink onto one side of the folder, put my white cardstock inside, and ran it through my die cutting machine. While the blue ink did not totally cover the background, I'm still really pleased with the results!

For the focal panel, I stamped the snowman onto a piece of Strathmore Mixed Media paper, with Ranger Archival Jet Black ink. I colored the image with Inktense pencils, and used a damp paintbrush to blend. After it had dried, I die cut & embossed it with one of the Spellbinders "Classic Ovals LG" dies. With the paper still in the die, I sponged around the edges with Summer Sky.

To create the greeting panel, I took some Ranger glossy cardstock and cut it to size. I applied alcohol inks in Stream, Silver, & Pearl to my blending tool, and smeared & daubed that onto the cardstock. I went back in with a little more of the Stream, just to add some contrast. When that dried, I stamped the greeting with Archival Jet Black, and heat set it to speed the drying time.

I rubbed Hero Arts Silver shadow ink onto white cardstock to create the mat layers for both the greeting panel & card front. I glued the greeting panel & embossed piece to their respective mats. Finally I glued down the matted greeting panel to the card front, & added the focal piece on top of that. I adhered the whole thing to a white A2-size card base. I will be sending this card on to Operation Write Home, for a hero to send home to her sweetie.

I'm also entering this card in Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes" challenge.