Cool Yule

I am very happy to be a Guest Designer over at Send a Smile 4 Kids for their "Anything Goes 4 Kids" challenge this week! We have three very generous sponsors: Crackerbox Palace is giving one winner 3 digis; All Dressed Up Stamps will award 2 digis; and Sassy Studios will give 4 digis.

For my card, I used a digital image ("Cool Deer") & greeting ("Cool Yule") from Crackerbox Palace. I opened both in Photoshop, and used them to create a mock up design of my card, using Sketch #98 from Operation Write Home:

 Once I had them sized correctly, I printed both onto scraps of 140 lb. watercolor paper.

I colored the reindeer with Inktense pencils, using a damp paintbrush to blend and shade the colors. I also painted the background with some watered-down Broken China Distress ink. Once my piece had dried, I did a little "outside the box" die cutting. I laid my Spellbinders "Standard Circles SM" die over my image, then marked where the inside of the die crossed the antlers & arm of my reindeer. I used my scissors to fussy cut in along the antlers & arm to those marks. Then I positioned my die again, slipping it under the antlers & arm, so they would not get cut by the die. I ran it through my die cutting machine, and trimmed off a little excess paper around the antlers & arm, where I hadn't cut enough. Then I went along the edges of those elements with a black brush tip pen, to make the fussy cutting look neater. Finally, I added a little Glossy Accents to the lenses in his glasses, for a bit more coolness.

I cut 2 squares of patterned papers from my scrap stash, and adhered them and the greeting panel to a piece of kraft cardstock that I'd cut to 4.25x5.5". I glued down the reindeer image, and rounded the top right corner with the 1/2" side of my Corner Chomper, just to soften that corner & add a bit of balance. All that was left was to adhere it to my white A2 card base, and add a little shine mark to his nose with my white gel pen. I will be sending this card to Send a Smile 4 Kids.