Time to make Christmas cards!
(Except I kind of get the feeling that everybody who makes Christmas cards does it either super-early, like July, or really late, like Christmas Eve…)
The stamp set is “The Newborn King,” from the Stampin’ Up Holiday catalog, and I fell in love with it the moment that I saw it while I was flipping through my newly-acquired holiday catalog on a bus to Riverton.
Why? Because of these glorious freaky trees:
I love these trees! And I have been trying to think up a card using this stamp for a while now.
I was playing around with aqua painters trying to make something that looked nice.
Aqua painting is hard.
I cautiously stamped the image in Crumb Cake on watercolor paper and tried to color it with aqua painters. The original plan was to do some competent painting of the image, then overstamp it with Versamark and pour on gold embossing powder and it would look fabulous!
I did not paint competently.
I splashed on some Daffodil Delight in the middle. I surrounded it with Pumpkin Pie. I slathered Tempting Turquoise and Pacific Point all around the rest of the image. Used some very concentrated Pacific Point to paint the Holy Family.
And the result was…um…shall we say…not pretty.
But this, I think, looks pretty good:
So what’s the secret ingredient?
Vellum!
I layered a sheet of vellum over it, and the colors went all soft and artistically blurred and beautiful. My harsh incompetent brush strokes magically looked beautiful. I stamped the image again on the vellum with Versamark, put on gold embossing powder, and layered it over the original watercolors. And now everything had sort of a stained glass effect, and when you tilt the card the gold goes all shiny, and by playing with how close the vellum is to the card stock underneath you can make everything look all bright and brilliant, or soft and muted:
Also, aqua-painting is kind of soothing. I did the painting part of this card while I was in a meeting at the library. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I am very stressed right now, so I am going to need to paint through this whole meeting.” My water dish was the lid of a Starbucks cup.
Thanks for reading!
Good morning Amanda, I just came from Mary Fish’s blog to tell you that your card is beautiful. The Vellum really makes the colors soft and amazing and the gold embossing truly makes the image stand out beautifully.
A truly elegant and sweet Christmas card, thank you for sharing.
Amanda you crack me up! From the details of your post to the fact that you painted this during a meeting! I have to be honest though. I’ve done the same thing on occasion when I work from home. If I have a minor roll in a teleconference I will cut card stock or color an image while listening in too. I do live your incompetent coloring technique and how you described it. Have a super Sunday.
Amanda, I also came to you via Mary Fish, and I’m so glad I did. Isn’t it funny how some of our favorite projects come to be by trial and error? This is simply stunning – I’m inspired!
Love the colors that you chose for this stamped image, Amanda. Aqua painting is soothing… I must get back to it soon. Isn’t great when trial and error produces a great effect! So I thank you for sharing it, Pal!!