Hi, crafty friends. It’s been a while since my last post. Things have been crazy busy this past month, and I’ve had zero time in my craft room, and not even time to write blog posts for cards that were finished before things went bananas. The annual holiday sale from Purple Onion Designs is a great way to come out of hibernation, though.
Winter and Balsam from the latest Christmas release from Stacey Yacula are exchanging gifts. They both look pretty happy to be out in the snow in front of Santa’s workshop. I snuck in the Santa silhouette in the sky and stamped a sentiment from the Santa Sentiments set in the snow.
I love creating these scenes with Stacey’s images. It’s a time consuming process, as I create masks for each critter and fussy cut them, but the end result is always worth it.
I stamped Winter and Balsam using Extreme Black ink from My Favorite Things before covering both of them with masks. I then did second generation stamping of Santa’s workshop using Memento Rich Cocoa ink, using first generation for the signage only. I like the softer look of the brown lettering in the background. I stamped the silhouette of Santa’s sleigh using VersaFine Onyx Black ink AFTER I’d colored in the entire scene. This is an ink that stamps very black and very crisp, but it’s a pigment ink and doesn’t play well with Copics, so it’s best to leave it to the end. I stamped the sentiment using Blueberry Sky ink from Papertrey Ink.
I also went back over the “cast iron” of the OPEN sign using a 0.3 cool gray multiliner from Copic and added white dots on the penguin’s hat and scarf using my white Gelly Roll 05.
I sprinkled on chunky white embossing enamel from Stampendous, melted the granules from the back of the paper and adhered my finished scene onto a 5 3/4 x 4 1/2″ white card base, making this card slightly larger than the regular A2 size card.
Lots of Copics used for this one.
There are some awesome stamps in the Black Friday – Cyber Monday deals category over at the Purple Onion Designs store, a few of my very favorites even. Take advantage of this massive sale while you can.
This image is 
I have a tall pine tree outside my craft room window. In it, there’s a huge nest that magpies built a few years back. One morning last week, I heard the magpies making more sound than usual. When I looked outside, there was a squirrel that had taken over the nest. It was adding one twig after another to the nest, I guess it had evicted the magpies. After quite some time, one of the magpies tried to get back in, but was chased away by the squirrel. I must admit I was delighted, I’d much rather have a squirrel outside my window than magpies. The squirrel is much cuter, and it’s a lot quieter too.
Back to the card. Once I finished the coloring, I stamped the word Christmas from the Christmas Greeting stamp set that Lili of the Valley released earlier this year using Jalapeño Popper ink from My Favorite Things.
I then die cut the panel using the second larges die in the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX 1 die set from My Favorite Things and adhered it directly to a card base I created from Jalapeño Popper cardstock, also from My Favorite Things. On a scrap piece of cardstock the same color, I stamped and white heat embossed the words cosy and wishes to complete my sentiment. I put a couple of additional layers of green cardstock behind each word for a little bit of added dimension.
I added a few sequins from the White Orchid Sequin Mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards to finish off this very simple card. A little bit of shine is never a bad idea on a simple card.
You’d think an image this simple would have less Copics used, but I tend to go overboard on snow. This time I also went overboard on the fur, even though it might not look like it.
Papirmølla 