A Vintage Christmas

*Thrilled to be picked a Cut Above at the Paper Players this week!*
*Thrilled to be picked for the Top 3 for the Make My Monday Vintage challenge!*

There are a lot of different interpretations for vintage.  For some it means adding frills and flowers and almost everything but the kitchen sink.  While I admire the look of some of these cards, they aren't "me".  I love things that look vintage, but in a cleaner, more streamlined way.  As a result, when I saw the challenges for vintage cards, I went looking through my retired stamps for those images that evoked another era, a simpler time.

That wonderful Christmas Lodge stamp set, for example, immediately caught my attention.  I love the images in that set and they definitely make me think of what winters long ago must have been like.  Of course the Winter Memories stamp set virtually "sprang" into my hands as well.  Those images are priceless and so well drawn.  Together, they gave me my vintage card.

I decided to create a scene.  I stamped the images I had chosen for my card onto Very Vanilla using Soft Suede ink to give them a look of yesteryear.  After all, during the 19th Century most photographers converted the metallic silver (black and white) with a chemical process involving the Sepia cuttlefish in order to help preserve the prints.  This is why the sepia prints have lasted so well for over a century.  I'm a photography geek so old-time photography has always fascinated me.

You can see the scene I've created is a combination of a whole lot of techniques.  I've added clouds in the background by sponging over a template that I made a while back.  I tore strips of Very Vanilla and sponges them.  I fussy-cut all my images.  I could have stamped and masked the lodge before sponging the clouds, but I wasn't sure at the time if I was going to put it on Dimensionals so I just fussy-cut while I was on a roll.

In a lot of these old photographs you can see just a bit of colour in places, where the photographer has inked in colour to spotlight portions of his finished photograph.  I tried to get the same effect by adding a very light watercolour wash over the tree and the little girl's coat and hat as well as the snow-girl's apron.  I think the result is sufficiently faded looking to give that old-time hand-coloured effect.

I also added quite a bit of the Silver Dazzling Details to all the trees just because that's something you see in a lot of these old cards and postcards:  fine silver glitter.  The bit of retired Victoria crochet ribbon and Antique Brad just finish off the old-time look for me.

My card is on a base of Naturals Ivory with a layer of Soft Suede.  The rest of the cardstock used is Very Vanilla.

For more cards of a vintage nature, check out The Paper Players.

For cards that are using sepia tones as well, check out Merry Monday Christmas Challenge.

And for another challenge that calls for vintage cards, check out Make My Monday.