Family and Friends

This week's 52 Christmas Card Throwdown challenge has the theme Family and Friends.

I had to cheat a little bit on this one - I don't have a lot of character stamps, so I have "borrowed" one of my Christmas presents bit early, the ClarityStamp Christmas Wee Folk.

I had a great idea about how to frame the little stamped scene one night, I was really pleased with it, until the next day when I realised it's basically the same as a demo Barbara Gray had done on her blog. Ah well, at least they're going in at some level.

I started by cutting a bauble shape from card, keeping the inner and outer shapes to use and masks.

Putting the outer shape down first, I brushed in some landscape lines using iced spruce distress ink and a stencil brush. I also brushed round the outside to give a faint outline on the card.

I then stamped the tree and two of the wee folk figures in olive pigment ink.

Next I swapped the masks and covered the bauble to add colour round the outside. I mixed red and a little blue acrylic paint, then applied it with a make up sponge, sweeping from the middle out to avoid leakage under the mask.

I quite like the texture that the strokes of the sponge create.

Once the paint had dried I added more texture with a snowflake stamp and aged mahogany distress ink, first and second generation stamping.

At this point I had a bit of a disaster and managed to splodge red paint into the bauble!, So, start over again! I may be able to do something with the first attempt by covering it, or making a tag, but it won't do for the challenge. Unfortunately the bauble didn't come out as cleanly on the second attempt, but no time to redo it again. The pictures are a mix of the first and second run!

In the meantime, I stuck an adhesive sheet onto copy paper, and covered it in gilding flakes. Such a gorgeous finish!

From this I cut several large snowflakes using a tattered lace die.

I trimmed down the card to a square, and attached the gilded snowflakes, over the outside edge, and cut back the excess.

For the mount, I brushed iced spruce over the first layer to match the bauble, then made a second layer (or mat? I'm never sure) with double sided tape and more gilding flakes.

And there we are! Ran up to the last minute in the end, but I got it done!