Blessings

I am so happy with how this card turned out! I got the "Stain Glass Nativity" stamp from Hero Arts (discontinued) at Michael's last year, and had never inked it up. I was going through my holiday stamps recently--again--and came across this one. I decided it was finally time to make it into a card.

I stamped the image with Versafine Onyx Black ink onto a piece of Strathmore Smooth Bristol paper, and heat embossed it with Recollections Clear Detail embossing powder. Then I colored it with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers. I did do a tiny bit of shading on the faces, but otherwise kept the colors flat, to mimic the look of stained glass. When I finished coloring, I fussy cut the window out.

Then--what to do for a design??? I knew I wanted to keep it simple, to let the image shine, but I wasn't sure exactly what direction to take. So I pulled out a white A2 card base, just to see what sort of area I had to work with. I do this sometimes, since it helps me visualize the space better.

I decided to use Simon Says Stamp's "Christmas Blessings" die for the greeting. I backed gold glitter paper with black fun foam that I'd applied Stick It adhesive to. I applied more Stick It to the other side of the foam, and die cut the words. In the end, I felt like the "Christmas" was just crowding the design. It also seemed kind of redundant anyway, since the image is a nativity scene. So I left off the "Christmas" word, and just kept "Blessings."

I cut a piece of dark blue cardstock to 4.25x5.5". I wanted there to be kind of a glow around the window, so I inked around the perimeter of my cardstock with Chipped Sapphire Distress ink. I followed that with Black Soot Distress ink, to increase the contrast even more. I adhered my window to the panel, and put my greeting below it. Finally, I mounted the panel to my white card base.

I'm entering this card in A Blog Named Hero's November Challenge: "Holiday Themed."