The Season to Sparkle

 

The sketch below from Freshly Made Sketches was the perfect one on which to test drive my new Penny Black die, Christmas Elegance.  It which cuts openings in the paper, so the design is formed by negative space.

I planned to use the technique I used on this card where you put wadded up plastic wrap on thickly applied watercolor, press it down and let it dry for a while.  I must not have applied enough watercolor because it did not end up with the cool texture I was looking for, so I went on to plan B.  I used the Crafters Workshop Lush Petals stencil with Rustic Wilderness and Pine Needles Distress Oxide Inks to put a pattern on the top half of the page, turned the stencil around, and repeated the process on the bottom half , so the petals would fan out towards both ends.  I repeated the process using ColorBox Gold Metallic ink after moving the stencil a little up and over to get a shadow effect.  I then masked off the ends that would show and applied some more Pine Needles in the middle and rubbed the excess gold ink off in spots so the color would show better through the tree openings cut into heavy white cardstock.  I gold embossed a sentiment from an old Close to My Heart set, Holiday Wishes.  I then pressed the edges of the inked, die cut, and sentiment pieces perpendicularly into a Versamark pad and then into gold embossing powder and melted it to gild all the edges.  I attached everything to a white card base and popped up the sentiment with foam tape.  I finished it off with bitty sparkles that  I had colored with an alcohol marker.

Here is the inside:

The sentiment is part of the same stamp set and the stars part of Stampin' Up's Star of Light set.  The gold embossing does not show up well in the photo.  I also plan on entering this card in a brand new challenge, the Peace on Earth Christmas Challenge.  It is an anything Christmas goes challenge with a mood board for inspiration if you would like some. 

This is an unusual card for me becuase I don't often used traditional Christmas colors.  Thank you for stopping by, Until next time, Hansi