Warm Holiday Wishes

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I'm headed to The Nutcracker this afternoon with my mom, sister, daughter, and her boyfriend so I thought it would be fitting to share this card with you today! To begin, I cut a 5 by 7 piece of Weathervane cardstock and embossed it using the beautiful Merry Moments 3D Embossing Folder. When I bought this particular folder a few months ago, I didn't realize it was 5 by 7, but it works well with the amount of flowers I chose to use and the tall nutcracker. I added some Stormy Sea and black ink around the edges and over the raised embossed portions to give it some added depth.

I cut quite a few poinsettias in varying sizes using the Into the Blooms: Poinsettia Die from white cardstock and then colored them with ink and blender brushes. I layered and glued them using both liquid glue and foam squares. I inked up the four leaves from the same die set and set those aside.

I die cut all of the pieces that I would need for the nutcracker using the Lovely Layers-Nutcracker Die. 

The pictures are washing the poor guy out a bit, but his skin is a peachy color and his hair and beard are cream. This is the first time I have used or assembled this nutcracker, so I learned that the base layer should be the color you want his hair and pants. I initially thought it would be the color of his face, so I went with peach, so now this dapper fellow is wearing peach pants! ha ha! He DID have peach hair, but I decided to cut the top portion again to give him the cream hair and just glued it to the base.

I adhered the poinsettias and leaves using foam squares and then secured the nutcracker in the middle using a double-stack of foam squares. I added some white acrylic paint splatter and then got to work on the sentiment.

For the sentiment, I chose an older one from Honey Bee Stamps that I bought a few years ago and haven't used yet called Home For the Holidays. I heat embossed it with gold powder and then cut it using the coordinating Home for the Holidays Honey Cuts. I secured it to the card front using foam squares. Each of the flower centers got a gem and then I also added a trio of sparkling clear sequins. It was looking just a bit bare, so I turned to my leftovers pile and found some bits of foliage that I tucked here and there. I gave it a spritz of shimmer spray and called it done! 

Thanks for fluttering by!