A Bottlebrush Tree for Christmas

Hello friends! I hope you are doing well.

Whew! It’s been quite a busy and crazy making month (actually few months)…I’ve been making for Halloween and Christmas and sharing over on my instagram feed for all the recent Tim Holtz releases and my head is in a creative whirlwind going back and forth between both Holidays. and now, I am finally on my way to sharing the “How to’s” of how they were all created…so stay tuned, as I’ll be doing a lot of sharing here on my blog over the next few weeks and don’t forget, next week there’s a new Distress color coming out!!!

Today, I am going in a Christmas direction and sharing some small cards and tags that I created for yesterdays Tim Holtz Youtube LIVE inspiration celebration for the new Stampers Anonymous Christmas release.

I had so much fun making these cute little cards and tags and am so thrilled that so many of you shared so much love for them during the LIVE. Thank you so much for that! If you missed the LIVE you can CLICK HERE to watch the replay.

These were created using the new Bottlebrush Tree Set CMS445, which was amongst some other FABULOUS stamp sets and stencils in the release. It’s really hard to find a favorite, but I have always LOVED bottlebrush trees… even before they were cool, LOL, so as soon as I saw this set, I knew it would be the first that I would use! I am lucky to own some of the original vintage ones, and they were my inspiration.

So, let’s get to making…

I started with a couple sheets of watercolor paper and set up my stamping platform to hold 2 different trees and gathered some of my Mini Distress Archival Inks. I chose the Distress Archival inks because I knew that in the end I would want to add white snow to the trees (all bottlebrush trees need snow), and since Distress Inks are water reactive, the distress inks would turn my white snow green, so, Archival permanent ink was the way to go! I’m so glad that the Distress Archival Inks come in a variety of colors!

To get the layered look I inked up the trees with Peeled Paint on the tree top, Hickory Smoke on the wire area, and Fired Brick on the wood bases of the tree, then I stamped it onto the paper. I flipped open the lid of the platform, then inked up the tree top again, but this time very randomly with Rustic Wilderness, then I stamped it again to add another layer and depth of color to the tree. Then finally, I inked a little Ground Espresso towards the tips of the tree branches, and a little grunge to the red base of the tree and stamped again!

The key is to pounce the ink pad very randomly onto the tree top to give variation of color. If you inked up the whole stamp, you would be covering up color over color and that isn’t the look you want to go for.

I quickly removed the stamped paper from the platform, while the ink was still wet, I lightly sprinkled some Bling Embossing Powder onto the tree, being careful not to completely cover the tree. I still wanted the color to show beneath and wasn’t wanting a complete snowstorm, just a dusting.

To do this, slightly hold your stamped tree paper at an angle, and pinch some embossing powder from the jar, then sprinkle the powder over the image, tap the extra embossing powder off and emboss with a heat tool.

Once I had embossed the snow, I used a palette knife and the Grime Layering Stencil THS130, and added some clumps of snow using Distress Opaque Grit-Paste. While the grit-paste was still wet, I sprinkled on some Clear Rock Candy Glitter. To be sure that the glitter would stick to the grit-paste, I lightly tapped my finger onto the sprinkled glitter and pushed it into the paste, then I set the trees aside to dry.

While my trees were drying, I made the striped background papers.

To do this, I inked up the Stripes Background Stamp from the Holiday and Stripes Stamp Set CMS281, with both Candied Apple and Aged Mahogany distress ink, then spritzed the stamp with some water and stamped the stripes diagonally across my paper, then I dried it with a heat tool. I did this same technique using only Black Soot Distress Ink for the gray and black striped papers.

Once my trees were dry, I stamped the larger trees using the new Department Store Stamp Set using both the “25” and “5cents” below the different size trees.

Some of the trees were stamped with stars from the new Darling Stamp Set, and some were left plain to add to the striped backgrounds…I just had fun making all the pieces, so whichever way looked good to me, I went with it. I then began trimming the tree sections down leaving approximately a 1/4″ space around each tree so that I had space to stitch with my sewing machine using red thread, everyone loves a festive stitch at Christmas. 😉 So, I sat down at my sewing machine and began making the stitched borders around each tree.

I created 2 small cards using the red striped backgrounds and the star trees, and a few other tags. Some were adhered with foam tape and the tag shaped ones with the black stripes were tied to some paper that had been stamped with stars and trimmed into a tag shape. I tied them together using cotton string that I found in my stash and embellished them with tiny idea-ology jingle bells and scraps of torn fabric that I found in my fabric collection.

With that, my tiny cards and tags were complete!

Thank you so much for stopping by and for your support, it truly means the world to me to be able to share my love of making and creating with you.

Take care and see you soon!

Creatively yours,

Stacy

Products used to create this make…to shop from Simon Says Stamp CLICK HERE, to shop at Scrapbook.com CLICK HERE

Bottlebrush Trees Stamp Set CMS455, Darling Stamp Set CMS457, Department Store Stamp Set CS458, Holiday and Stripes Stamp Set CMS281, Grime Layering Stencil THS130, Distress Ink- Black Soot, Candy Apple, Aged Mahogany, Distress Archival Ink- Peeled Paint, Rustic Wilderness, Fired Brick, Hickory Smoke, Ground Espresso, Opaque Grit-paste, Palette Knife, Clear Rock Candy Glitter, Bling Embossing Powder, Idea-ology Jingle Bells, Cotton String, Sewing Machine and thread, fabric.

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