Hi! After what feels like way too many red Christmas cards, I’ve moved on to other colors. Today I have a green one to share, featuring Snowman and Friends from Lili of the Valley. I actually watercolored this. I’m no watercolor expert, and this was only my second attempt at proper watercolor, but I find it’s not as scary as I first thought. Hard to relinquish control and go with the flow? Yes. Steep learning curve? Sure. Different from coloring with Copics? Worlds apart, not comparable at all. Am I having fun? You bet!!! I want to break out my watercolors more, I just need to find time to play.

Because this is a digital stamp, I had to get creative. The ink in my printer smears when it comes into contact with water, and I’ve found that heat setting doesn’t help prevent bleeding once I start painting. My solution was to print the image at 10% opacity for a no line look. That way the bleeding wasn’t visible when I added water and paint. It’s kind of crazy to try no line watercoloring before you’ve done any watercoloring with black lines, but this is kind of how I roll. I think it worked out okay, and the image isn’t super detailed either, which certainly helps a newbie just a little bit.

I used a rectangle die from Waffle Flower to die cut my panel. This also helped flatten out the warping. I created a dark green card base to match the tie and the band on the hat using Pinefeather cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I white heat embossed a sentiment from the Itty Bitty Holiday stamp set from My Favorite Things onto a separate piece of Pinefeather cardstock, cut it down to a strip and adhered two more layers behind it, before adhering it to the bottom center of my snowman scene, and my card was complete. I debated adding some sort of embellishments, but sometimes you just have to walk away.