I wanted to give the ColourQ challenge #355 a whirl because I thought the colour combo was gorgeous. I spotted my new Jingle All the Way stamp set (I was the lucky winner of a gift certificate in MFT's weekly sketch challenge and used it to get this set, which has been on my wisj list for a long time) and thought the colour combo could make a cool retro combo for a Christmas card. This card also fits in my catch-up Merry Monday challenges with #190 - Santa.
Then as I was selecting which Santa to use, I saw the "You're on the nice list" sentiment and for some reason, the first thing that popped into my head was adding something inside the card that says, "How'd that happen?" And as I was thinking that, I spotted the little girl and her puzzled expression and decided then, I'm totally making this card. haha! I always decorate the inside of my cards with a little something pretty, but I never add any additional sentiments inside. It leaves more room for messages and makes it easier when selling cards at the office so that they won't have any surprises when they open the card (and they don't have to take the cards out of the plastic sleeves to inspect the inside before buying). Here, I'm thinking I just might use this card myself at Christmas for my English family members anyway.
The Chevron Border dies were on sale, so I got those in the same order, and the Mini Fringe was actually an unexpected gift I received with the order. I cut a piece of cardstock out just to test it and as I was starting to gather my stuff for the card, I noticed the elements I wanted to use would work well with this week's MFT sketch. I wasn't initially planning on using this sketch for the very simple reason that I had already used it earlier this week on another card, but it was working much better than the other sketch I had selected anyway, so I went for it again. The card base was a little bared so as I was thinking of which background stamp to use, I remembered I actually own a MFT background stamp called Snowfall. It added the perfect subtle touch to the Pistachio Pudding cardstock.
To add the sentiment inside, I had to improvise a bit. I was planning on using either my own handwriting (and my first try on scratch paper wasn't great) or using another alphabet set, but I was a little bummed that the fonts wouldn't match. So then I thought of something else: using a marker, I inked up the letters I needed and stamped them side by side. I already had the "HO3" sentiment to start the "How" and some of the letters I needed were side by side on some words, so overall, it went fairly quickly. For "happen", I didn't have any Ps but I had the word ALL, that I stamped and I used my marker to transform the Ls into Ps.
You might be wondering how I created that red border on the front of the card. That one was born out of sheer luck. For my first sketch try, I had die-cut the fancy rectangle that will be part of the Cheerful Tags Thinltis in the upcoming Holidays catalogue. Those dies include everything you need to make tags to hang on bottles (I'll make samples to share with you in a later post). I thought I could use the square on the card, and as I was poking out the holes, I noticed that the pieces had a really interesting shape, so I pulled them out and pulled them aside. They would be a pain to put adhesive on, except that I wanted to make my life simpler when I made the die-cut in the first place and had thought to put adhesive sheets behind my cardstock before die-cutting. My little pieces were therefore already stickers, so I managed to add the border easily. I used the rectangle on the back of my card instead, to create my signature block.
I used a tag from the same Thinlits collection for the Santa. The tag has a fold and two holes for ribbon, so I used the half-cutting technique with my Big Shot - where you place your top cutting pad only on the part you want die-cut - to avoid having the second hole at the bottom, and that allowed me to make the tag longer as well. Metallic sequins were added, striped satin ribbon and a darling little jingle bell on Santa's hat. The images were colored on watercolor paper using an Aqua Painter brush and inks.




Supplies
Stamps: Jingle All the Way, Snowfall BG (My Favorite Things)
Cardstock: Poppy Parade, Pistachio Pudding, Basic Grey, Black Glimmer Paper, Watercolor Paper
Designer Series Paper: In Color Paper Stack
Ink: Pistachio Pudding, Black Archival, Poppy Parade, Smoky Slate,
Soft Sky, VersaMark
Accessories: Black Stampin' Emboss Powder, Cheerful Tags Thinlits, Mini Jingle Bell,
Stampin' Dimensionals, Aqua Painter Brush, Metallic Sequins, Big Shot Adhesive Sheet,
White Medium Envelope, Jingle All the Way Die-namics, Chevron Border Die-namics,
Striped Satin Ribbon, Brad