Merry Monday #288 {NOEL}

Welcome to this week's Merry Monday Christmas Challenge! I'm so happy with my  collection of cards that is growing week by week! 

Deanne has asked us to create cards without stamps! What??? LOL! I thought of making a scrappy card, but in the end, decided to take a more artistic approach and pull out my watercolors that haven't been used in a while.

My design was inspired by my cosmetic bag. It has a Navy background with words spelled out in Red, Fuschia, and Mauve. I just love the bold, graphic quality  and I thought it would be fun to try and translate the idea onto paper. I had to make a few adjustments because of the size of the letters, but I really like how it turned out. I like doing things a little more artistically from time to time and this was the perfect excuse.

To begin, I cut a piece of Strathmore cold-pressed 140 lb. watercolor paper to 4 1/8 by 5 3/8. I used my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors to do a wash of blues across the paper. I also mixed up some gold really well with water and splattered it over the top. I set it aside to dry while I got to work on the letters.

As I mentioned earlier, I was limited in my design because of the alphabet die cuts I chose to use. They are the Bookprint Alphabet Upper Die set. In the end, I really like that I was only able to get one word onto the design. I just chose to incorporate the 3 different colors by using a different color for each letter. The "N" and the "L" are both red, however! I die cut each letter four times and then glued them together using Tombow Mono Multi glue. I also added some Wink of Stella to each letter as well as a good coating of Tonic Crystal Glaze.

Once the watercolor panel was dry, I ran it though my cuttlebug using one of the "Next Generation" embossing folders from We R Memory Keepers. I also spritzed it heavily with shimmer spray. I glued the letters onto the card using liquid glue as well. I made sure to place something heavy on top for a bit so that they would stick nicely. With all of the grooves from the embossing, it makes it a little more difficult to glue them down.

At that point, I was ready to call the design done. It had a boutique chic feel that I just love, but my daughter disagreed. She DID NOT  like it! Her new favorite word is "terrifying" which is how she described this card! LOL! So...at that point I thought what more I could add {that wasn't a stamp} that wouldn't detract from the original vision I had for the card. I decided to pull out some ancient SU! rub-on transfers. They were just the thing! The texture from the embossing folder made the application a little tricky, but I finally got it done! I added a few Sparkling Clear sequins to the centers of three of the snowflakes for some shine!

I really enjoyed making this card! It was so fun to think a little out of the box and not use stamps! Thanks, Deanne, for the fun challenge! I hope you will join us as well! It's so fun to see your creations in the gallery! Thanks for fluttering by!