Noel in Chocolate and Cream

The later part of July is a good time to start on the winter themed cards. I started the concept for this card when I saw three different challenges and decided to combine them: Christmas, brown and cream (with stamps from a House Mouse line), and a layout with the top different from the bottom and decoration on one side. With my sepia Yule card, I was also hoping for a bit of an old fashioned look combined with modern.

Challenges

Just for Fun Rubber Stamps blog: Christmas in July
House Mouse and Friends blog Monday challenge: Chocolate and Cream
Scrapbook.com:  June Cardmaps challenge
Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps blog 20 July Wonderful Wednesday: Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp blog June Work It Wednesday: Wafer Thin dies or Stencils

Supplies

InLinkz.com

Putting It Together

I currently have very few House Mouse stamps. I do find them cute, but also a tad expensive. The small animals have a realistic look vs cartoon-y of most stamp lines. 

Out of my few House Mouse stamps, I decided to use the two bunnies with the smaller one offering flowers to the larger. Only, I decided to erase the flowers to have my own offering. I stamped them on a scrap of watercolour cardstock (they're not very big) and watercoloured them with Distress Ink: Weathered Wood, Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain, Antique Linen.

I decided I wanted to use Silk Microfine glitter with lace, having seen the technique demonstrated by Els of Elizabeth Craft Design (linked at the bottom of this blog post) and fallen in love with it.

Starting withe piece of cardstock covered with a sheet of 2-sided adhesive, a piece of nylon lace it laid on the cardstock's base adhesive. Make sure the lace is completely flat on the card and fully attached. The adhesive will be exposed through the lace's open work.

Cascade the darker colour of microfine glitter over the panel. If you use a coffee filter you can catch the un-adhered glitter to use in the future. This technique actually uses very little glitter.

Using your fingers, burnish (rub) the glitter into the adhesive with your fingers.

Using a fluffy makeup brush, brush away any loose glitter. You can get a brush to use with this and other microfine glitter techniques at the dollar store for quite cheap. You don't need one that's fancy just fluffy. You can burnish a second time with the release paper and brush again if you choose. You can gently wipe the panel with a Swiffer dry cloth if you want to be sure all the loose glitter is gone.

If you want to re-use the coffee filter, wipe it with the Swiffer cloth to pick up any glitter remnants.

Carefully remove the lace to expose the rest of the adhesive.

Cascade the lighter colour of microfine glitter over the panel into the coffee filter. Pour the glitter back into the bottle.

As before, burnish and brush. Either discard the loose glitter from these two steps or put it in a new container for mixed glitter. You don't want to get any of the dark colour into the light one.

The finished panel will look a lot like the lace you started with but very sparkly. The adhesive should be fully covered by the glitter. The burnish and brush steps adhere it permanently to the panel.

With the glitter done, I used a border die to give it a scalloped edge with a Spellbinders die. The glitter panel should cut the same as any thick cardstock.

Dry fitting to see if my idea was going to work.

• Candles: cut from Glittersilk cardstock, flames from scraps of iris Shimmer Sheetz
• Poinsettia: three petal layers die cut from vellum and watercoloured with Antique Linen (which caused natural curls), leaves sponged with Rusty Hinge, both leaves and petals highlighted with Vintage Aged Bronze patina ink.

The card base was cut from Neenah Solar White 110lb as a top fold card. The edges were sponged with Vintage Photo. The flower is attached with Glue Dot. And I thought I was done, but... I needed a sentiment as well and the placement of the lace at the top is too high from the rest. I didn't want to completely obscure the background paper but got the lace too high so it doesn't feel balanced.

I mulled it over for the next day, even looked at buying new ribbon but in the end used more things in my stash. From a pack of ephemera surfaces from Spellbinders, I added a slightly sheer linen-y glittered fabric that I first adhered to a piece of vellum (for rigidity) and then ran through with others from the scallop border die set. I also die cut Noel from the glitter card stock and added two tiny pearls for the dots over the 'e'. I tried several different sentiments and sentiment styles there but this one fit the feel of the card (and the space) so well. I even like how the lace panel looks more with the lighter scallops beneath it. Some times the best thing that can happen is bedtime and being forced to set it aside for a night.

Inside, I 'distressed' the sides and added the sentiment that fit with the giving of the candle by the little rabbit.

Challenge Layout

Scrapbook.com:  June Cardmaps challenge

Glitter Lace Technique

Video from Elizabeth Craft Designs showing the technique with silk microfine glitter and lace.