Warm Holiday Wishes

Merry Monday Christmas Challenge Blog's theme this week is "Hot Beverages." I'll admit, that stumped me at first, even after looking at the design team's inspiration cards. But I finally came up with this card, using the coffee cup from the "Latte Love" stamp set by Fiskars.

My design inspiration came from this card by Darlene DeVries. I had also used that card as inspiration for this one. I began by die cutting a piece of white cardstock with the largest of Simon Says Stamp's "Stitched Rectangles." I taped that to my cutting board, masking off the border outside the stitching lines with painter's tape. Using Hero Arts' Cup o' Joe ink, I stamped the coffee cup first in the lower left, since I knew I wanted my focal image to be there. Then I stamped it randomly around the rest of the background. Finally, I created an ombre by blending Abandoned Coral, Festive Berries, Fired Brick, and a little Aged Mahogany Distress inks over the panel.

I stamped the coffee cup again on a scrap of white cardstock with Cup o' Joe, and used my Prismacolor colored pencils to color it in. I debated whether to leave the "sketchy" look, or blend the colors with Gamsol and a paper stump. I finally decided on the sketchy look, and left the pencil strokes visible. After I'd finished coloring, I fussy cut the cup out.

To create my greeting, I lined up the appropriate letters from Lawn Fawn's "Milo's ABC's" stamp set on an acrylic block. I stamped that in Cup o' Joe on a piece of white cardstock, and cut it into a banner. I cut another strip of green plaid paper from The Paper Patch (which I'm sure is long defunct). I adhered it behind my greeting banner, and trimmed the end to match the "V" shape of the banner. I felt the banner needed a little something more, so I cut a 1/8" strip of kraft cardstock, and glued it between the white banner & patterned paper. Then I used my ATG to adhere the banner to the panel, and popped up the colored coffee cup over the left end of my greeting strip with foam tape.

All I had left to do was adhere my die cut panel to a piece of kraft cardstock that I'd cut to 4.25x5.5", and mount that to a white A2 card base.

I'm also entering this card in Live Love Cards' January "Pick Your Inspiration" Challenge.