Merry Christmas To All!

Merry Christmas Eve and Happy Holidays!

I hope you all are well and enjoying every bit of your Christmas festivities and traditions. I am back today to share one final Christmas card tutorial.  This card was created with a few of the recently released holiday stamp sets from Tim Holtz and Stampers Anonymous. Inventor 5 (CMS359) and the Santa and phrase were from Festive Overlay Stamp Set  (CMS357).

The Santa was the perfect size to place directly in front of that lovely Christmas tree.  The idea popped into my head and I had to try to combine them!

My Santa card was created with a lot of my favorite things. I embellished the card with a vintage skeleton key, one of the new Idea-ology Christmas Adornments “Merry Christmas” charms, the Sizzix Tree Ring and the new Funky Festive Die Set.

I accomplished the layout of the Santa and tree by cutting the tree stamp into a couple of parts…

Umm…what did you say?? 🙂 I know, this is a HUGE thing for some folks to do, but it really works wonderfully with the Stamp Platform. The stamps can then be placed right back together like a puzzle when you want the whole image intact. But if cutting your stamps isn’t your thing, then this card could also be stamped and created by masking.

Let’s Begin!

 I cut my Inventor tree stamp carefully with scissors and set it aside. I stamped the Santa first then added the tree in the background, and lastly added the phrases and words. The Stamp platform is the best tool to accomplish this. I created a mask for the Santa with a piece of post-it paper. I stamped the Santa onto the post-it and then cut him out. All the parts of the tag were stamped with Black Soot Archival Ink so that I could watercolor them.

Here are the steps in photos…

Step 1…place the tag on the stamp platform leaving space for the tree to be placed in the center of the tag. (the tag to the right is an example of the final tag)

Step 2… stamp the Santa

Step 3… place your Santa mask over top of Santa

Step 4… Line up the tree and stamp it over top of Santa. (I lined up the heal of his boot to the bottom of the tree stand.)

Step 5… Remove the mask over Santa…

Step 6… Voila!

Step 7… place the phrase and inventor signature stamps and stamp them…

Step 8… A completed Santa tag…

Then, I began coloring and embellishing my tag with a variety of Distress Markers, water brush and the new Music Background Stamp (CMS358) and Falling Stars Layering Stencil.

After the falling stars were blended, I sprinkled the stars with some clear and gold embossing powder and heat embossed the stars.

I blended the tag with distress inks and added some drips and spritzes of water and ink. Then, with my finger, I added some Ranger Opaque Texture Paste Crackle around the edges of the tag and let it dry and crackle.

The opaque crackle is AWESOME and sucked up some of the colors from the distress inks!!

Then I added some Walnut Stain Distress Crayon into the crackle by rubbing it with my finger and a bit of water.

See the crackle GOODNESS!???!!! I LOVE IT!

Next, I added a tiny bit of the Distress Crackle Paint, Clear Rock Candy to the edges and sprinkled it with some Clear Rock Candy Glitter that had been dyed with Mushroom Alcohol Ink. I added some more holiday bling by adding collage medium around Santa and sprinkled that with some of the glitter as well.

The embellishments…

I cut and embossed a few of the Sizzix wood slices out of Kraft paper and blended the outside edges into the center with a variety of distress inks. Then layered several of them together and glued them with collage matte medium. Then I embossed the edge of the wood slice with Ranger Embossing Ink Dabber and sprinkled it with Rocky Road Emerald Creek Embossing Powder. Then I added age rings with a distress marker.

I cut a few different greens and bows from the Sizzix Funky Festive Thinlets set with a variety of scrap papers from my scrap box.  I adhered them together and used them to embellish the card.

Then cut a larger leaf from the Skeleton Leaves Die set with some scrap paper. Embossed a piece of watercolor paper with the 3d Lumber Texture Fade and sprayed it with Walnut Stain Distress Spray Stain. This became the background of my card.

I added some Gold Alcohol Ink Mixative to the Merry Christmas Coin and tied it to the skeleton key with a piece of red string.

I then began arranging and adhered all the parts and pieces together to create the card.

The inside of the card was embellished with a phrase from the Festive Overlay Stamp set and embellished with the Falling Stars Layering Stencil, Music Background Stamp and Clear and Gold Embossing Powders.

Thank you so much for stopping by today and for all your continued support of me and my blog. I read every comment and appreciate every kind word. I am so happy to share my love of all things Tim Holtz, mixed media and rubber-stamping…

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas shared with loved ones, family and friends.

Happy Holidays!

Creatively yours,

Stacy

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