Hi, everyone! Wednesday today, and that means Mo Manning creations around here. Today I have a very simple BLUE Christmas card to share. If you’ve been here before, you may have noticed that blue is my favorite color for Christmas cards.
I love this Merry Little Christmas image from Mo Manning, and I can’t quite believe it’s taken me so long to color it up. I pulled it out today, though, and it was a very easy one to color.
I felt like I’ve colored up far too many red Christmas images lately, so I didn’t want even a hint of red on this one. The blue bow totally works, I think, the same is true of the blue, green and hint of yellow on the bird that I tried to color up like a Eurasian Blue Tit. I die cut my image using a stitched rectangle die from My Favorite Things.
I glued my panel onto a cardbase made from Enchanted Evening cardstock from Papertrey Ink, and stamped a sentiment from the Holiday Messages stamp set from Mama Elephant using Enchanted Evening ink, and my card was complete. I didn’t add any embellishments to this, I wanted the image to shine.
Speaking of the image, here are the colors I used. I also used B90, which is a color I’ve made myself, on her scarf.
Let’s talk for a minute about P13. They’re a Polish company, and they make beautiful, thick patterned paper. That’s really all you need to know, because it’s all I know. When I say thick, I mean thick. I don’t know their exact weight, but it’s close to card stock weight! I’m telling you, these are wonderful. They’re double sided, and the little strip you see at the bottom here with the torn edge is the back of that very same sheet (
I have tons of floral clusters left over from the patterned paper, and one of the wonderful things about the P13 papers is that the design isn’t repetitive. This specific sheet of patterned paper had plenty of florals on the front, but they were all a little different, which means creating different cards from them will be a breeze.
I wanted a soft color palette for my card, so I have no colors that are really dark in this image. The darkest marker I used is E57, and it’s contained to the hair on one of the fairies, the flower centers and the ladybug.
Once I’d colored the entire panel, I took the largest of the dies from the Stitched Rectangles STAX 1 set from My Favorite Things to turn it into a panel and create a nice border on the front of my card. I knew from the start that I wanted my sentiment inside the balloon, but I couldn’t decide on white or black. I thought the white might not pop enough against the yellow balloon, but I also knew that the end of the pigtail on the fairy would mess with any black stamping, making the letter illegible. In the end, I went with the white, but you can hardly see it in the photos against that lightest yellow. I might go in with a water brush and the refill for the darkest color I used on the balloon to darken it up later. I don’t want to ruin the nibs of my markers by touching the embossing, but refill and water brush with a little bit of blender solution will work without ruining anything.
I finished my card by adding some groupings of sequins and Jewels from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards. I used the Iced Sherbet mix for this card.
Last, but certainly not least, are the colors I used for my image.
For this card, I used the largest die in the Stitched Rectangles STAX 2 set from My Favorite Things. You can find set 1 
I glued my die cut panel onto a cardbase made from Stamper’s Select White cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I die cut a circle from vellum using a circle die from the Stitched Circle STAX set, also from My Favorite Things. It matches nicely with the stitching around the edge of my floral panel.
I also die cut a bunch of numbers using a die set from Papirdesign. I made most of them from white card stock, but the top numbers from a piece of that same patterned paper. It might not look like patterned paper, but there’s a lot of white space on this sheet, and I used some of that for my numbers. It makes the whites match, which I really love. I put a 3 layers of my numbers underneath the vellum, and the remaining four layers on top. It makes the vellum stand out a bit from the background, which makes the number show up a little better and not get lost in that busy background.
I finished off the card by gluing on some sparkling clear sequins from Pretty Pink Posh.
As usual, I colored my image in with my Copic before die cutting it down to a panel using a stitched reclangle die from My Favorite Things. I glued it to a card base I made from Stormy Sky cardstock from Papertrey Ink, also a gorgeous color, and it matches my coloring pretty well.
I didn’t want to do too much to distract from my coloring, so I die cut a God jul (Merry Christmas) sentiment using a die from Papirdesign and that same color cardstock as my base, and glued that next to the little girl. I didn’t even stack several die cuts on top of each other like I normally would.
I finished my card by gluing on some diamonds from the Glass mix in the Crystal Collection from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.
Those last six colors in this graphic? All the colors I used to create the red scarf (I only used E08 for the red on the bird).
This is the 
I colored in the image using my Copics. I don’t think I’ve ever colored ocean before, and I was genuinely surprised by how easy it was. I even a little hint of blue to the ocean beneath the ice, giving the illusion of something more under water. 9/10 of an iceberg is under water, after all. It may seem weird that I chose yellow hearts for a Christmas card, but I have a very specific recipient in mind for this card, and she loves yellow 😉
I die cut my panel using the third largest die in the Stitched Rectangles STAX 2 set from My Favorite Things and stamped a sentiment that I made from two different Norsk Stempelblad AS stamp sets using Simon Says Stamp Audrey Blue ink. I sprinkled on some chunky white embossing enamel from Stampendous and heated it from behind, melting the granules. The last thing to do was add lots of foam tape to the back and attach it to my white card base. Couldn’t get much simpler than this, really.
Lots of blue and blue green Copics used on this image. Oh, and grays, quite a few of those, as well.
I colored up these snowmen for Kathy Racoosin’s 30 day coloring challenge in June of last year, so it felt good to finally put them to use. Another thing I put to use? Those die cut squares. They were left over from 
I had 12 snowmen, but I needed room for a sentiment, so I stamped one from Norsk Stempelblad AS onto one of the die cut white squares using Papertrey Ink Enchanted Evening ink and glued the last snowman to the inside of the card instead.
I used the largest die in the Stitched Rectangles Stax Set 1 from My Favorite Things on some Enchanted evening card stock, and glued it to my Stamper’s Select White card base before adding all the squares with 1 mm foam squares. I then used more 1 mm foam squares on the back of the snowmen. Dimension is life, as Laura Bassen says. I didn’t want this card to be too thick, though, so I stuck with the 1 mm. Added some snowflakes die cut with the Hero Arts Snowflake Confetti die, and my card was finished.
I needed to make a quick card last night, and decided to color up three of the small monsters from the Cupcake Monster set from Mo Manning (I have 
When my little monsters were all colored in with my Copics, I pulled out the Big Balloon stencil from My Favorite Things along with four different colors of distress ink. I created three balloons that overlap. All the balloons are ink blended using two colors. The yellow one is Squeezed Lemonade with Spiced Marmalade toward the base of the balloon, the orange one is Spiced Marmalade with Worn Lipstick at the base, and the top one is Worn Lipstick with Picked Raspberry at the base.
I die cut the Big Birthday Wishes die from My Favorite Things five times from Stamper’s Select White card stock from Papertrey Ink, as well as from the blended piece, which is also Stamper’s Select White. It’s my favorite white card stock, I haven’t found one that’s more white than this, and it’s also wonderfully sturdy at 110 lb. I did a layered inlay, then fussy cut my monsters and placed them strategically on my card. I love that the top one looks like he’s balancing on the top of the H, and the one on the right is leaning on the E while dangling his feet from the top of the S.
This image was part of the Christmas release from Lili of the Valley that came out a few weeks ago, you can find the stamp 
Papirmølla 