Inspiration: Clean & Simple #98 + Simon Says Stamp Wednesday (Baby It's Cold Outside)
Avery Elle has this adorable stamp set called Christmas Magic that I picked up and looked at every single time I stopped at my craft store, and the 25% offered for Black Friday finally did me in. My niece it still very much into unicorns - it was her birthday party theme, so this will make a great Christmas card for her.
For the last three or four years, I've been making a card "from Santa" for her and hiding it into the full-size wooden mailbox I have at home. She's loved that thing ever since she was a toddler and the first thing she ever did when she came over during the month of December was look inside the second she came into the house (I usually keep it by the door). So the last time she came over to craft with me, we were quietly working on our project and out of the blue, she looked at me and said, "Those Santa cards I receive every year are really from you, aren't they?" I hadn't seen that one coming and that threw me for a loop. I quickly recovered and said something about the elves being crafters as well and making the cards for Santa to go with the toys. I have no clue if my answer was satisfying but she didn't say anything back. Flash forward to a couple of weeks later, during her birthday party. The whole family was having dinner at my sister's place. My sister and I were sitting at one end of the table, Megan at the other end. Everyone was having different conversations, so I told my sister about Megan blurting out this question about the cards being from me. I knew she was not listening to us when I started the story, but it appears that sometime along the way, she picked up on the fact that we were talking about her and started listening because at the end, she told me, "I know you are making the cards because you smiled when you told the story." Oh my gosh! I'm both extremely pleased by how wise she is and how good she is at reading up cues, but this is also making our job harder, trying to keep up the Christmas magic alive. My sister is planning to bring back Gaston, the Christmas elf that has been visiting each year, and I'm curious to see if she will be questioning him as well. My colleagues told me that it was normal for kids to start questioning the existence of Santa at 7 or 8, but she just turned 6, so it seems like she's ahead of the ball. That being said, I still made a card "from Santa" for her as she loves everything handmade and I suspect she'd be really disappointed if there wasn't anything in the mailbox waiting for her. I'm giving this a try and we'll see what the reaction will be, but this time, I know that my poker face better be ready to kick in gears!
When making my last card, I had pulled out my Doodlebug paper stack. and I had put the Polar Pals papers aside, hoping to work them into a design. The colors seemed great for a snowman and a unicorn, so they became my starting point for the card. I liked the three panels of the Clean & Simple sketch, perfect for my three images. Because I wanted to use stitched squares, the ones I had were too big to put three in a row side by side, so I overlapped them a little to make the sizing work, and I covered the seams with the unicorn and the lamppost so you can't tell anyway.
I wanted to ground my lamppost and characters so I used the awesome Snowcap mini stencil from Tim Holtz along with Grit Paste to make a snowy ground. I prefer the Grit Paste to my regular white texture paste as it gives the snow a nice realistic texture, and I make sure to not spread the paste evenly through the stencil to get a textured surface. I sprinkled Shaved Ice mica flakes over the paste before it dried. (And discovered that it was flaking all over the place since I didn't push the flakes in the paste, so I had to go back and add glue, then sprinkle more flakes to get the effect I wanted.)
The three squres were inked with Distress Oxide inks (in Broken China, Wilted Violet and Hickory Smoke), stamped with snowflakes and then I added iridescent bubbles, stars and star sequins. The unicorn was covered with Glitter Gloss Aqua Shimmer as I imagine a magical creature would probably have a nice natural shimmer. And for the sentiment, I found a "Naughty / Nice" sentiment in the Tags & Tidings stamp set (Stampin' Up! 2018 Holidays Catalogue), which I topped with a blue-green gem. The ribbon below is a white shimmery ribbon.
The images were colored with my Polychromos pencils. Still totally loving my new set (and having the full colour collection, which makes color matching so much easier!)
Supplies
Stamps: Christmas Magic (Avery Elle); Étiquettes des Fêtes (Tags & Tidings - Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Thick Whisper White
Patterned Papers: Polar Pals (Doodlebug Design)
Ink: Tuxedo Black (Memento); Broken China, Wilted Violet, Hickory Smoke (Distress Oxide - Ranger)
Accessories: Christmas Magic Dies (Avery Elle); Polychromos Pencils (Faber-Castell);
A2 Seafoam Envelope (envelopes.com); Shaved Ice (Stampendous); Grit-Paste, Blending Tool (Ranger);
White Glimmer Ribbon, Stitched Shapes Framelits Christmas Tags Thinlits, Stampin' Dimensionals (Stampin' Up!);
March Crystals, Iridescent Bubbles (Studio Katia); Crystal Stars (Buttons Galore & More); White Gel Pen (Gelly Roll);
Snowcap - Mini Stencils Set 38 (Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous); Iridescent Mini Star Confetti (Pretty Pink Posh);
Polar Pals Fancy Frills Stickers (Doodlebug Design)
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