A Partridge, a Pear and a Tree

I made this card for the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown Challenge, week 43.

The challenge theme was to use resist embossing, which is a beautiful technique I love, so I ended up making two cards for this challenge. The design team cards and other entries have some brilliant examples of the technique, it lends itself very well to snowflakes.

For this card I wanted to use a set of "Twelve days of Christmas" stamps. The set includes a partridge and a pear, but no tree, so I pulled out a wooden block rubber stamp of a twirly tree that I really like. I often use this stamp just for the swirls in backgrounds, but today I was using the full tree.

I stamped the tree onto Centura Pearl hint of silver card with watermark ink, then added the partridge in the branches and the pear hanging from it. I embossed with a clear powder. I then used a frame die and drew round it with a versa mark pen, then embossed the line in clear as well.

I wanted a moss green, so mixed squeezed lemonade and bundled sage distress inks on a blending mat and painted it over the image. The embossed areas resisted the ink, making the design stand out in white.

I cut the image out using a larger size of frame die.

To layer up I used a square of uncoloured centura pearl, then a layer painted to match the image. I cut a shape from the centre of this layer first to try to be a bit frugal with the card.

I mounted the layers together and onto a 6x6 card base. I left the layers flat as Christmas cards usually have to posted, but these could easily be mounted with foam to give more dimension.