Monday, January 22, 2018

Merry Monday #274 Bits of Holiday Magic!

Happy Monday, friends! I'm so glad you've stopped by today! I have a fun card to share with you for this week's Merry Monday Christmas Challenge! I'm starting to realize how addicted to Christmas stamps I have become! LOL! I just ordered a few more new sets so it won't feel like a broken record around here! Ha ha!

Isn't this snowy scene beautiful? Nina has challenged us to make a Christmas card with snow. I guess snowflakes count as snow, right? I was planning on making something much different for this week's challenge, until I saw some absolutely gorgeous photos that my stamping friend Dawn Lusk posted on Facebook. They were photos that she took of ACTUAL snowflakes and one of them was placed on a beautiful pink/orchid sweater or scarf! I was completely inspired and wanted to incorporate that into my design for today! Thank you, Dawn!

To begin, I needed to recreate the sweater element for my card. I started by watercoloring a piece of 140 lb cold-pressed watercolor paper from Strathmore. I used my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors to create the different colors. I love using my Pearl watercolors, but the colors are limited, so I chose to use these, but add the white pearl paint over the top that is included in the 36 color set. I love that I can make any of the colors with a pearlescent quality by adding that over the top! I did have some interesting patterns on the watercolor piece before I embossed it, so I may try a design like this again, but without the embossing so you can see the "fractals" that I created with paint, but mimicked the fractals on a snowflake. I spritzed it with Frost Shimmer Spray and then dried it using my heat tool. 

I set that aside and got to work on the snowflakes for the card. I grabbed a piece of cardstock that matched the background nicely and die cut the retired "Snowflake Medley" snowflakes and then heat embossed them with some old SU! powder called Hologram Highlights. I knew it would give the snowflakes a translucent and sparkly quality that I was hoping to achieve.

Once the watercolor panel was good and dry, I embossed it using on of my favorite embossing folders called Knitted from Richard Garay. I picked mine up at Hobby Lobby quite a while ago. I heat embossed the sentiment onto a strip of vellum using silver detail powder. Once it had cooled, I added it to a strip of glitter cardstock slightly larger than the vellum strip. It helped flatten it out and I was able to tape it with scotch tape tightly to the back.

I wanted to give the snowflakes a little bit more detail, so I added some lilac Nuvo Drops here and there on each snowflake. I did this AFTER they had been adhered to the watercolor piece. I used this same technique on this non-traditional CARD I made last year. It ended up being one of my favorite Christmas cards of the year!

The watercolor piece is adhered to an A2 cardbase using foam mounting tape for some added dimension. I also added a few GEMS here and there for even more sparkle! Thanks for fluttering by!

15 comments:

Linda W. (ScrappinBari) said...

Stunning in pink, Kelly! Just love the sweater knit with the snowflakes on top!!

Unknown said...

Kelly,
Stunning, I love the non traditional colors for the background and the snowflakes. Great take on this weeks challenge. Have a great week!

Casandra Bennett said...

This is so beautiful. Love the shine and the non-traditional color, too. Thank you for your inspiration. :)

JoAnn said...

Love your pink snowy card Kelly. So much detail in the embossing and the snowflakes, love it.

Notes by Nina said...

Fabulous card, I love all that fun texture and pretty pink.

Linda said...

Awesome card, Kelly. Love the non-traditional snowflake colors. Have a great week.

Migdalia said...

WOW! This is absolutely beautiful!! I love the pretty pink and snowflake!

Anonymous said...

Kelly this is so pretty!!! I love everything you do!! you have such a great talent! I so glad that you blog!!!! you are so awesome!!

Anonymous said...

SO PRETTY!!

Anonymous said...

your cards are amazing. I love what you did to the back ground of the card.

Anonymous said...

I love that it is water colored with that pretty pink! I never thought of using pink for snow flakes

Marcia Hill said...

Oh Kelly...this is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!! I bet IRL it shimmers like crazy and I just love that embossing folder you used...need to use mine more! And of course your snowflakes are just delightful with so much detail! You always take your cards and projects to the next level and I so enjoy looking and reading about ALL of it!! Hope you're having a wonderful week!! :0)

Susan Joyce said...

Wonderful card Kelly love all the texture and your beautiful pink snowflakes.

AlisonC said...

So beautiful. I really love all that wonderful texture and colour. Inspiring. :)

Rosemary said...

love this fun, out of the box take on the inspiration!!!