Inspiration: Paper Craft Crew Card Sketch #355
This older Stampin' Up! set has been a long time favorite, and when I pulled out the Holiday Village papers from Bo Bunny, I decided they would look nice paired with the nutcracker. In recent years, Bo Bunny has taken a vintage turn with their papers and their new style does not really line up with mine, but I do have a lot of their older collections. This one has a beautiful soft feel to it and I love the non-traditional colours, with shades of soft yellow and pinks.
While looking for Christmas embellishments, I found some mica flakes and decided to glue some around the corners of my papers. I also added silver tinsel trim, wooden snowflakes and epoxy brads. I love the look of epoxy accents, but I hate the fact that they always end up yellowing. This is especially frustrating considering they are not inexpensive. You can see here that the polka dot background the snowflake have a definite yellow hue to them, but the fact that the papers are yellow helped me work around that and work them into my design.
I colored my nutcracker using my Faber-Castell watercolor pencils and for the first time, I tried regular paintbrushes with a little bucket of water, instead of waterbrushes. I wanted to see if that would produce better results. The answer is no, for now. If anything, I found it harder to control the brushstrokes, but since it was my first try, I probably shouldn't draw conclusions right away. I'll also give my brushes a try with different mediums as well to see what works better with each medium.
Finally, I used a sentiment from the same stamp set and embossed it in Melon Mambo powder on Smoky Slate cardstock. I used a cut-apart from the paper to decorate a matching metallic green envelope.
Supplies
Stamps: Santa Stache (Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Melon Mambo, Smoky Slate (Stampin' Up!); Watercolor Paper (Fabriano)
Patterned Papers: Christmas Village (Bo Bunny)
Ink: VersaMark; Jet Black (StazOn)
Accessories: Albrecht-Dürer Watercolor Pencils (Faber-Castell); A2 Fairway Metallic Envelope (envelopes.com);
Sentiment Labels Dies (Simon Says Stamp); Wonky Stitch Rectangle Dies,
Wonky Stitch Square Dies (My Favorite Things); Wooden Snowflakes (Studio Calico);
Iridescent Flakes (Arnold Grummer's); Make It Merry Designer Brads (October Afternoon);
Silver Tinsel Trim, Melon Mambo Stampin' Emboss Powder, Stampin' Dimensionals,
Ticket Corner Punch (Stampin' Up!)
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