Noel --- How elegant is silver?

Have you ever fallen in love on the spot?  Well I did when I saw the wonderful Memory Box die, Glowing Candles.  I knew the moment that I saw the die precisely how I wanted to use it.  So, of course, I bought it.

As Fate would have it, I found a challenge that was made for the idea I had in my head.  How cool is that?  Of course I had to enter it and so I proceeded to create the card I had imagined.

The first thing I did was to cut Silver Foil with the marvellous die.  I wasn't at all disappointed.  You know how sometimes things aren't as great as you think they'll be?  Well, this was every bit as great as I thought it might be.  The silver foil die-cut was perfect...or almost so.  I had to add a couple of little details.  First of all I coloured a number of rhinestones using my Cherry Cobbler Blendabilities.  While they dried, I used my Old Olive Blendability to put light veins along the holly leaves.  Then I added the coloured  rhinestones as berries and the die-cut really was perfect.

I kept the background simple.  It took a bit of work to be simple, but then there are degrees of simple in card-making.  First I heat-embossed "Noel" across the bottom of the Whisper White cardstock using Silver embossing powder.  After that was good and cold and dry, I proceeded to create a background.  I used a large sponge and lightly added "blobs" of So Saffron, Pistachio Pudding and Pink Pirouette inks.

After that I took my retired two-step Watercolour Winter stamp set and used the Poinsettia stamps, both the sketch one and the "fill-in" one.  I triple off-stamped Strawberry Slush with the "fill-in" stamp and double off-stamped Pistachio Pudding with the sketch stamp.  I wanted the images to show up but very lightly.  The die-cut was, of course, the star of this card.

Once all that was dry I used a base of Pistachio Pudding and then added a layer of Silver Foil (with the corners rounded).  I glued the die-cut directly to the coloured up Whisper White because there was no way to properly raise it with Dimensionals.   Then I rounded the corners and adhered the piece to the rest of the layers.

And that's the card.  I love it when everything comes together just the way you've imagined!

Yes, I'm showing the same card twice.  It's hard to photograph silver.  So I've added the first with a flash and the second without.  The real colours are much more like the second photo but the shine of the silver barely shows and therefore I had to have one with the flash.

For more cards in this challenge, check out Just Add Ink.  This is their challenge inspiration:

You can also check out more cards in the City Crafter Challenge Blog where I've also entered the card in their challenge.   The spray of Vanilla Shimmer Smooch Spritz all over the background really gives it this look in real life.  Their inspiration photo is here:

I also entered the card in the Christmas Card Challenge #35 which, this week, is for "anything goes".  You can check out more of their cards here.

And finally I entered this card at Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra.