Inspiration: Color Throwdown #568
The Color Throwdown colors this week would have made a fantastic fall card, but I was in Christmas mode and I looked for a way to make it work. I had the Cocoa Stand stamp set from Avery Elle I wanted to use and I realized the brown would work great for the wooden stand, the blue for the sky and snow and that I could probably get away with working in orange details and just a touch of green for the greenery.
Since it was my first project using the stamps, I didn't know how much of a card front they would cover, so I started by stamping and coloring the images with Copic markers and die-cutting them to see the space I had to work with for the design.I had heard a lot of great things about the Glitter Markers from Nuvo, so I tried out a set of three from my local store. The Crushed Papaya matched my coloring perfectly, so I added a touch of shimmer with the marker to the orange part of the design. I love how it looks - gorgeous shimmer without being too much.
My first idea was to use only the stand on the card front and use the sleigh and elements for the envelope. I then changed my mind and decided to keep them on the card to create a scene. My first idea was to go horizontal, but once I overlapped the sleigh over the side of the stand, I decided to go vertical instead. To create the sky, I inked a piece of white cardstock with a mix of Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans and Chipped Sapphire Distress Oxide inks. I spritzed with water, then added speckles of diluted white gouache, and I stenciled the stars from the Sparkle layering stencil from Tim Holtz using Red Bronze metallic gilding polish from Cosmic Shimmer. It was hard to get the fine lines from the stars with a sponge, so I finished the details using a fine paintbrush. (Once I was finished, I realized I should have added the white snow afterwards so that some of it was in front of the stars, but that's really just me splitting hairs.)
Because I love the Wonky Scalloped Frames dies, I decided to frame my scene with the largest one. I also happened to stop at what I call my "fancy dollar store" on Friday (if Walmart and the Dollar Store had a baby, that'd be the result - it's really big and they have everything under the sun at very affordable prices) and I found 8½ x 11 felt sheets. I now there are different qualities of felt and not all of it die-cut nicely, but among their vast choice of colors, they had a nice steel blue that caught my attention and I decided to grab it to give it a try. Not only does it die-cut beautifully and neatly, but I also found out when I checked the receipt that they sell for 33 cents (Canadian) a sheet. That is a real steal for felt. Now, I want to go back and have a closer look at the colors they have available. It so happened that the blue felt matched my design perfectly, so I used it for my scalloped frame (and backed it with cardstock because the felt was too soft to handle while trying to glue it down, so adding the cardstock back made it easier to work with it.
Because I had so much blue on the design, I wanted my card base to be orange. It felt a little bare when I placed the design on it, so I tried embossing a piece of copper cardstock cut to 4" x 5-1/4" and embossed with the Woodgrain embossing folder. The resulting embossed piece was gorgeous but it was barely showing underneath the scalloped frame, which felt like a waste of foil paper, so I embossed a piece of 4-1/4" x 5½" Cajun Craze cardstock with the Woodgrain folder, used Soft Suede ink to highlight the embossing using a dauber and I finished it off with a soft brushing of the same red bronze gilding polish around the edges. What a difference to the card adding that texture made!
For the envelope, I picked a Sapphire metallic envelope and simply added a piece of narrow orange washi tape. I absolutely love how this card turned out. One of my faves this season!
Supplies
Stamps: Cocoa Stand (Avery Elle)
Cardstock: Cajun Craze, Bordering Blue, Whisper White (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: Tuxedo Black (Memento); Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans, Chipped Sapphire
Distress Oxide Inks (Ranger); Soft Suede Classic Ink (Stampin' Up!)
Accessories: Cocoa Stand Dies, Wonky Scalloped Frames Dies (Avery Elle);
Sparkle Layering Stencil (Tim Holtz); Pinewood Planks 3D Embossing Folder,
Washi Tape, Stampin' DImensionals (Stampin' Up!); Opaque White (Copic);
Red Bronze Metallic Gilding Polish (Cosmic Shimmer); Markers (Copic);
Ember Glow Glitter Marker Set (Nuvo); A2 Sapphire Metallic Envelope (envelopes.com)
Cindy... your card is fabulous!!!
Posted by: Elizabeth Stewart | November 12, 2019 at 11:09
Beautiful card Cindy! I adore this stamp set and I love it with a night time scene. I am doing one more episode with this set and was thinking of doing a night time scene.
Posted by: Carrie Rhoades | November 21, 2019 at 14:15