Merry Christmas to You

Catch the Bug challenge blog is having their "Christmas in July" challenge series this week. Monday's theme was a color challenge:

I must admit, I had a bit of trepidation with this color palette. I mean, the greens I could see in a Christmas card, but teal??? But I decided to go for it!

I used the "Winter Snowman" image by Bugaboo Stamps for my card. I did flip the image horizontally, to make it work better with my greeting, from Doodle Pantry.

After printing the image on a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper, I colored it with Inktense pencils, keeping mostly to the green/teal color scheme. I did add a bit of Mid-Vermilion for the stars, carrot, and heart; and brown for the arms. Then I set that aside to dry.

For the background, I decided to go with stripes. I used 2 patterned papers: a tone-on-tone green paper from my scrap stash, and Recollections' "Blue Marbling" 12x12" paper. I cut them into 5/8" wide strips, and adhered them to the front of my card base. Then I matted my main panel with a dark teal cardstock, and adhered it to the card.

As a finishing touch, I added some Glossy Accents to the ornaments, stars, & little heart on the snowman. I was so tempted to add some glitter or clear Wink of Stella to the snow, but I'm sending this card to Operation Write Home. Glitter makes our military heroes visible to enemy night-vision goggles, so it's a definite no-no! But, for all my trepidation at the start, I think my card turned out really well!