Thursday 3 December 2015

ClarityStamp Challenge - A Christmas Story

Hello and welcome fellow crafters on a very wet and windy day in Yorkshire.


This months inspiration started off life as a plain piece of kraft card.  I don't have many Christmas stamps so I had to just use the couple that I did have.  I started off by stamping the holly stamp around the edge of the card with versamark ink and then heat embossing with white embossing powder.  I really love this effect on the kraft card.


I decided to use pencils to  colour the holly in, but half way through I regretted this decision as I spent an awful lot of time sharpening my pencils.  The kraft card was really quite rough and was blunting them rather quickly.  It looked nice when finished though.





I wasn't sure what to do at this point, so just looked at it for a couple of days.  Then I had one of those 'aha' moments whilst looking through my stencils.  I placed the winter tree stencil over the card with the obligatory moon mask too.  I used chipped sapphire and gathered twigs distress inks through the stencil with cut and dry foam, as I wanted the ink really dark.  When I removed the stencil I noticed that the ink was still really wet so thought i would put some clear embossing powder over it.  When I heated it I noticed that it had lots of white flecks in it that must have in the clear.  I must admit it looked really cool, like snowflakes.



I edged the card with more of the gathered twigs ink, but it was still lacking something, so out came the gilding wax.  I rubbed some into the moon and then around the edge of the card.  Also onto the black card that I mounted it onto.  The word and stag stamps were done in versamark ink and heat embossed with gold to match.  I really loved the overall look of this one, even my Mum likes it and she's my biggest critic! 


I do hope you have enjoyed reading my blog, it was a bit of a long one this time.  I hope you find some inspiration and can join in with the challenge.

Hugs
Amanda xx