Chalkboard Holiday Wishes Wreath

A Blog Named Hero's current challenge theme is to copy a designer. I found this card by Emily Midgett that I'd pinned last summer, and liked the chalkboard look. I decided to create a wreath card with a chalkboard feel to it.

I cut a piece of black cardstock to 4.25" square. After I marked the center with a pencil, I stamped my greeting, from Hero Arts' "Color Layering Christmas Tree." I heat embossed that with Recollections Snow detail embossing powder.

I traced a circle die with a pencil around the greeting, to give me a guide for my wreath. Then I stamped one of the pine branches from Hero Arts' "Pine Branches" in Versamark several times around that circle. Then I white heat embossed those. I stamped a different pine branch around the wreath again, this time using just Yeti pigment ink from Lawn Fawn to get a more dimensional feel overall. I felt the heat embossed part of the wreath was a bit too "perfect," though. So I stamped more branches, just to fill out that part, and heat embossed those.

To finish the wreath, I stamped berries from "Pine Branches" in Versamark ink around the wreath. I heat embossed those with Ranger Red embossing tinsel. I didn't get the greatest coverage the first time, so I went over them with my Versamarker to add more ink, and embossed them a second time. Finally, I added gold gel pen accents to the ends of the berries. When the gold ink had dried, I smudged some white ink around the image with my finger, to emulate eraser marks on a chalkboard.

I tied a "faux" bow, following the instructions in this video, at the bottom of my wreath. I cut strips of red cardstock, and adhered them to either side of my image panel. Then I adhered that to a white A2 card base. I got this layout idea from Darlene DeVries.

I'm also entering this card in a2z Scrapbooking's November challenge: "Winter."