Tuesday 4 November 2014

Simple Joy

What I was aiming for:  a simple card in non-traditional Christmas colours.  I achieved that by using one of my top favourite stamp sets, Lovely as a Tree along with a much-loved but retired stamp set, Winter Memories.

I used a base  of Naturals White, then a layer of Basic Black and then a layer of Whisper White which I first prepared by stamping.  I used a small acrylic block and three blues:  Soft Sky, Pool Party and Coastal Cabana.  First I spritzed the Whisper White with alcohol, then I stamped the three colours using my acrylic block, and finally I spritzed more alcohol over the stamped colours.

Once that dried, I stamped over the blues with my pine tree stamp using Memento black ink.  On another little piece of Whisper White I stamped only the little boy, dog and snowman from the Winter Memories stamp using Memento black ink.  Then I coloured the images using only the same blues and a touch of Smoky Slate and skin tone.  I also stamped only the "joy" from the stamp in the hostess Good Greetings stamp set centred just below the tree.

I cut around the images I had coloured and used Dimensionals to attach the piece in the lower right hand portion of the card.  And that completed my simple Christmas card.


You can see I flipped the sketch from the Just Add Ink challenge over on its side.  For more cards using this sketch, check out Just Add Ink.


For more cards using non-traditional colours for their Christmas cards, check out "Less is More".

14 comments:

  1. Great Christmas card Heidi and your ink block background makes a lovely backdrop for your images. Thanks for joining us at Just Add Ink.

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    1. Thanks so much, Nikki. The sketch worked beautifully for this card.

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  2. Heidi I love your card with the blues !!

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  3. Simply beautiful Heidi.
    Love the colours and the stylish stamping.
    Great use of non-traditional colours
    Thanks so much for sharing and taking part.
    Sarah xx
    Less is More

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    1. Thank you so very much for your wonderful comments, Sarah. I appreciate them.

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  4. Heidi, I love the technique that you used for the background of your stamped image. The crisp black looks so good against the soft blues. This is a beautiful card! Thanks for playing along with us at Just Add Ink this week.

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    1. Thanks so much, Christine. Spritzing the stamped background colours with alcohol made them more mottled which I really liked. I like using silhouettes, too, so having the tree black just helped spotlight my main image of the boy, dog and snowman that much more.

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  5. Thanks for reminding me of the acrylic block background technique... it looks super!
    Thanks so much
    Chrissie
    "Less is More"

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    1. Thanks so much, Chrissie. I like the mottled look that occurred when I spritzed the block stamping with alcohol.

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  6. Wow, this is gorgeous! I love the way you've created the scene with your stamping. Thanks for playing along with us at Just Add Ink.

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    1. Thank you, Tina. I loved the sketch and the rest fell into place.

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  7. Super combination of stamps Heidi and love your colourscheme!
    Sorry to be so late commenting this week, thanks so much for your LIM entry
    Anne
    Less is More Designer

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    1. Thank you so much, Anne. I appreciate your comments.

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I welcome your comments or questions.