Once again, we’ve reached Wednesday, which means coloring around here. Specifically, coloring of Mo Manning’s adorable digital stamps. This time, I chose Kayla with gingerbread and turned her into a gift tag for Christmas. You can never have too many gift tags.

I’ve colored her up before. A couple of years ago I colored her with reds and turned her into a Christmas card. This time, though, I just had to go for the blues. I love blue for Christmas. Well, I love blue all year, but especially at Christmas time. There’s just something about it that screams Christmas to me, way more than red ever will.

I wanted to make her hair golden blonde. Well, this is more in the area of light redish brown, but she’s so darn cute, I really don’t mind. The bench, her pants, and her little winter boots are actually all colored with the same color family, I just didn’t use the lighter ones for the bench, and similarly, I didn’t use the dark ones for her boots. Skipped both the lightest and the darkest for her pants. I did the same thing with my blues, I went very light with the scarf, and darker on everything else.

I found a tiny little gingerbread man in my stash, I just had to include him. I used some lacy ribbon from Papirdesign in the perfect blue color to match my coloring, and tied the gingerbread man to the ribbon with some warp thread from my grandmother’s loom stash. Added a tiny bit of strong liquid glue to my knot, so that it wouldn’t come undone.

The sentiment is made from two stamps from the B04 stamp set from Norsk Stempelblad AS. I stamped Nisseklem first, in Enchanted Evening ink from Papertrey Ink, then the smaller bit right below using the same ink. I wanted the two lines to be fairly close together, otherwise I would have stamped them both at the same time.

On the back I used another Norsk Stempelblad AS stamp, stamped it in the same blue color, then started on my background. I started with my tree and the little kid tobogganing by stamping them both in white hybrid ink from Papertrey Ink. I did this in my Misti, making sure I got good coverage over the entire surface of both stamps. I then went in with an acrylic block and a tiny snowflake stamp from the same stamp set, rotating between each stamping to create a random snowflake border along the top. When I was sure my hybrid ink was dry (I used a heat tool to help speed up the drying process), I went in with a mini ink blending tool and blue inks (Spring Rain and Blueberry Sky from Papertrey Ink), trying to make an even blend across the rest of the background. The hybrid ink somewhat resists anything you put on top, but not completely, resulting in a much softer look than if I were to heat emboss the images, then ink blend on top. I really like this soft look, it won’t distract from the names I’m putting on my gift tag, and everyone will be able to read it on Christmas Eve when it’s time to open presents, even with dim lights.