12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 11

Wow another challenging one. When I decided to pack the colour in I didn't realise how hard it would be to still get the Christmas feel across lol. Hopefully I succeeded in making something both different and bright and colourful that still conveys "I'm a Christmas card!"  Please let me know if I succeeded! As ever here is the inspiration behind my 11th card, T!m's tag...

Card 11


Yay last post I need to write up :) I had fun using my new pencils for this technique!

My first step was too grab an A4 sheet of cardstock and randomly colour small areas of colour with my new  Derwent Inktense pencils. The first time I tried to be random in size and colour and it didn't work very well with small stamps. So then I started again and coloured random sized rectangles/squares.

I then used my aqua painter to make the colours more water colour like.

I used various stamps from Inkadinkado and Stampin' up til I found an image I liked. I went with one from Stampin' Up. I used perfect medium on the stamp and stamped the image onto my pretty paper. I covered this with black embossing powder and heat set from the underside of the cs. I then cut around my images.

At this point I have to say I started with the leaves like T!m did but I just wasn't feeling it lol. And I scrapped it and put the leaves aside for another project. The pencils inspired this idea.

I then grabbed a snowflake from the same set and stamped a lot of them in small spaces left from where I had cut things out. Embossed them in black and used Lifestyle Crafts circle and scallop circle dies to cut around them. I used florist masking tape (my 3m tape was Mia after the other card I used it on lol) to keep the dies in position and ran them through my Cuttlebug.

I grabbed  some shrink plastic. I have have both Poly Shrink and Shrinkies and these both work in the eCraft. I used repostional tape on the piece of plastic and stuck it to my stabiliser. I then opened SCAL 3 and used the three free snowflake images that came with the software. I enlarged them to around 4"/10cm and cut with my eCraft.

I then covered the three snowflakes with Perfect Medium and  UTEE and shrank them with my heat tool.

I moved  them to the side of my craft sheet and reheated them. I used tweezers to flatten the sides and try to straighten them up a little and left them to dry.

I  then made my own glimmer glaze. I used a small amount of Reeves Iridescent medium spritzed with water once or twice and mixed. I then added Multi-Medium Gloss and did some more mixing. Finally I added a  couple of drops ofTumbled Glass Distress Reinker. I started at one and built up to 3 or 4 as I made a full pot. This is now my preferred method for making my glaze. It's a nice subtle sheen. Both Glossy Accents and Triple Thick give a more glossy finish. I like them as well but this is my fave :) I made a divine dried Marigold one the other day.

I painted the back of a piece of semi-gloss cs with my glaze because it's nice and sturdy and thanks to my sister I have tonnes! She got from a recycle place (not quite A4, there is a slice missing from the long edge) and we went halvies :) Very hard to get a decent pic so you will see after the next step :)

I took my Evergreen Bough and distressed around the edges. Sorry this is still not a good photo.. It's coming I promise lol. You will get to see the sparkle and shine!

I grabbed my Pearl Mixative alcohol ink and covered the backs of my snowflakes.

I then decided they needed more and added rock candy Stickles... It didn't give the pop I was after so I added some frosted lace over that.

So I have the background done and as I have a lot of elements I laid them all out til I got the kind of look I was after. I do this quite often when I have a lot to put on a page or a card. I then took a photo. I forget where I wanted things when there are many so a pic helps me remember Just where I want all the little things when I start assembling. Especially If I am working in layers. It also allows me to see where I may want to or need to add dimension.

See that sparkle and shine?!!!! Scrummy lol. As you can see I added the words "On Earth" to go with peace in the pic. I used a scrap of my shimmery cs leftover from the background and I used a recollections double alpha for this and embossed in black again. I also added a white cs background to the large stamped image and distressed the edge with evergreen bough.

I decided to pop out the word Earth with dimensional foam squares and also used some small spots to raise the lower edge of the middle snowflake so it was flush with the stamped image.

I used double sided tape on the small snowflakes and multi-medium matte on the snowflakes with lil dots of foam tape under the middle one as well.

And card is done! Yay. So much colour on a christmas card! It's not what I originally set out to make but it is sooo much better. I am not used to seeing such a bright card lol but I love it. All that sparkle and colour just makes it something special to me...

So this is the last blog I needed to play catch up writing. My 12 cards are all done and dusted, all uploaded to T!m's blog.  I think I did pretty well to get all 12 Cards  done in my first attempt lol. Hope you like this card :)
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 1

Hi Everyone. I am starting a bit late and this is my first go at using T!m's 12 Tags of Christmas techniques for myself. Not the first year I have followed his blog though lol. As I was looking at the tags I was thinking what could I use them for? Scrap pages, sure, but I wanted a more immediate use for my hopefully lovely creations. So I thought why not cards. I get to make some pretty things and then gift them on to my friends and family :)

Here begins my 12 Cards of Christmas! My Muse

Card 1
The first step as always is deciding what direction to take. I started with the background and made it up as I went. I really had no idea what I was going to do. I didn't have a lot of the things used on the first tag so I started by going through my embossing folders and texture plates. I chose the Sizzix Snowflakes texture plate.

I then choose some pale blue cardstock from my DCWV White Core stack thinking I would be sanding a little later to reveal the core...

 I then used versamark dazzle straight onto the side of the texture plate I was going to be using

and ran it through my trusty bug ( I had to do this twice as the first time I forgot the versamark! lol), I added a couple of extra pieces of heavy paper to give a deeper emboss.

Then I sprinkled Hero Arts White Embossing powder over my cardstock and used a paintbrush to remove it from areas I wanted no embossing powder. I lightly ran my finger over some places in the background to remove a little bit more embossing powder.

 I heat embossed, then used Pearl-Ex Macropearl all over the cardstock and re-heated. I thought this would add a lovely sparkle effect to the white "snow". After that I very lightly ran my Tumbled Glass Distress Ink pad over the raised areas of the card and used my Ranger Distressing Tool along all its edges.
I then used Sure Cuts a Lot and some free poinsettia svg's I found online to create some flowers.

I cut the flowers and some leaves from Fundamentals 1 using my ecraft. My flowers and leaves are roughly 2" and 1.5". I used three of each size for the flowers and three 2" and two 1.5" leaves.

At this point I have to say WOOOOHOOOOO, my first proper project using my newest ecraft. And it works!!! lol... I will not tell you what number ecraft this is for me. But thank goodness I didn't give up :)

I again used Tumbled Glass Distress ink and my Ink Distressing Tool to lightly colour around the outside edges of my flowers.

I wanted a deeper cut around my petals so took a small pair of scissors and cut in between each one. I recently bought some tools off ebay that I found in the nail art section. Nail art dotting pen or marbelising tool. I got a packet of 5 for less than $2au. I used these to add lines and definition to my flowers and leaves.

I pinched each petal of my flowers and did the same for the leaves.

After defining my flowers and leaves i spritzed them with home made pearl glimmer mist. My mist consists of water, gum arabic and Pearl-Ex in Macropearl, Miccropearl and Pearl White to give them the same wintery shine as my background.

I used the Adirondack Paint Dabber in Snow Cap around the outside of my petals and leaves to give another snow like look. After the paint dried I went over the edges on both the flowers and leaves with a Zig Embossing Pen with a brush tip. I used a paintbrush to add extra Macropearl Pearl-Ex over the embossing liquid.

I used Glossy Accents to layer a small and large poinsettia together. I used more in the centre of the small flower and added some very small yellow seed beeds. I got these in a pack of 12 small different colour pots from a shop called Go-Lo in Australia.

I used the piece of cardstock I ran through the bug the first time sans versamark to stamp and emboss Merry Christmas onto, again in white. I cut around the embossed words and used my snow cap paint dabber around the edge and added even more Macropearl Pearl-Ex. What can I say, I love sparkles. I also thought it gave a lovely twinkly snow like effect :)

I worked out my placement of leves and flowers and adhered them with more glossy accents. I decided i wanted merry christmas to be raised and used foam squares to raise it off my background.

I mounted the background on another piece of the same colour DCWV cardstock using double sided tape.
I then used double sided tape to adhere it to my plain white card base :)

And there we have it. My take on Tim's first 12 Tags of Christmas Tag in card format. I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and like the card. Thanks for looking.
Happy Scrappin'
Purple