Friday, August 9, 2024

Oh Holy Night


For this week at Christmas Card Throwdown, they have had a sketch challenge. I kept to the sketch pretty literally, but made a square card instead of rectangular.


I have not done Distress Oxide ink smooshing on photo paper for a long time. So I decided to do that for my background. I used a few blues & a purple, and applied the inks to my non-stick craft mat, 1 or 2 colors at a time. After I spritzed the ink with water, I smooshed my glossy photo paper face down into the puddles & droplets of ink. I repeated this process several times, drying the ink between layers with a hair dryer. By drying each layer of ink before adding more, you can layer the colors rather than having everything just mush together into one overall color.

After I had added several layers of ink, I dried it one last time. It always looks like a chalky hot mess at this point in the technique. To make the magic happen, I dampened a cloth with water & wiped it over the paper surface. That removes the chalkiness & reveals the beautiful colors that you built up. Once I had removed all the chalkiness, I set that aside to dry while I worked on the rest of my card.

I stamped the Magi silhouette image from Paper Smooches' "A Blessed Christmas" set (discontinued) onto white cardstock with clear embossing ink. I sprinkled on Stampendous Marcasite embossing powder & used my heat tool to melt that. I used a craft knife to cut out the few "inner" negative portions of the image, then fussy cut around the perimeter with my scissors. I then "painted" the edges of the cardstock with a dark grey marker, so the white cardstock core didn't show. For the ground, I added embossing ink to a 1/2" strip of cardstock, & heat embossed with more of the Marcasite powder.

To add some interest to my background panel, I splattered some White Gold shimmery watercolor from the Gansai Tambi Starry Colors set over the paper. I dried that with my hair dryer, & then glued the heat embossed pieces to the panel. I stamped my greeting, from the same set as the image, with Cotton White StazOn ink.

I cut 2 triangles from a scrap of silver handmade paper from my stash. I adhered those to the corners of a panel of teal cardstock that I'd mounted to a 4-1/4" square card base, & then adhered my main panel on top.

I am also entering this card in the following challenges:

5 comments:

  1. elle est superbe Andrea, quelle magnifique design, merci de jouer avec nous chez 52CCT, biz

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  2. A beautiful card for Christmas, thank you so much for sharing this month at my Crafty Wednesday challenge, hope to see you back there again soon!

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