Let It Snow – Distress Ink Mixed Media Christmas Cards

Hi Crafty Friends!

I have more Christmas cards to share today, this time using some newer Tim Holtz dies!

These cards were made specially to send to some friends so I have had to hold off in posting about them as I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so the post has been switched off and scheduled for later.  If you are reading this now, well I guess it means it’s been switched back on!

These cards are made using the same process just in different colour schemes, and I made all four of them at the same time, so I have taken some step by step photos to walk you through the process.

I did a bit of ink blending using Distress Inks, one of my favourite techniques, using a blending brush and watercolour paper,  Mustard Seed, Picked Raspberry and Festive Berries on the left and Mermaid Lagoon, Salty Ocean and Blueprint Sketch on the right.

Then using my Tim Holtz sprayer, I gave them a good spray with water, big drops and small mist sprays, then after waiting a minute or so, blotted it off with a paper towel and left them to dry.

Once they were dry, I added some white paint splatters using white Gouache, and again left it to dry naturally.  I could have dried them with a heat gun but I didn’t want to move the splatters about on the paper!

Next I added some black paint splatters using black fluid acrylic paint.

Then I finally added a layer of gold paint splatters using a nice light gold metallic acrylic on the red cards and silver paint splatters on the blue cards.

Here’s a close up of one of the finished cards panels showing all the paint splatters.

I didn’t take any photos of the die cutting because I was so involved in the process of cutting and gluing together all the little elements to make these hanging ornaments that I forgot.  I used white card for the inner pieces and metallic gold for the red cards and silver glitter for the blue cards.  Then i chose some card colours for the card bases.

I cut and folded the card bases and glued down the little baubles on each of the cards, varying them slightly for each card.  I glued the hooks down at each end leaving space for the baubles to be moved a little.

Then I decided that the top of the baubles on the right side needed something more so that they didn’t look like they were hanging in the middle of nowever!  So I used festive floral dies to cut out some leaves and berries and added them on to the cards.

Green and gold for the red cards and…

Blue and silver for the blue cards.

I used Tim Holtz Society alphabet dies to cut out the words LET IT from white card and then painted them with the same metallic acrylics used for the paint splatters, so the card reads LET IT SNOW using the snow bauble on the right.

And here are the finished cards

CHALLENGES

I am entering this card in the following challenges:

A Vintage Journey – Holly Jolly Christmas
Funkie Junkie – It’s the Holidays

PROJECT RECIPE:

Watercolour paper
TH Products used: Distress Inks – Mustard Seed, Picked Raspberry, Festive Berries and Mermaid Lagoon, Salty Ocean, Blueprint Sketch, Circle Words Christmas thinlits, Holiday Greens thinlits, Bigz XL Alphabet die -Society
Gina K card
White Gouache
Finnabair Black liquid acrylic, Unicorn Hair metallic
Decoart – silver fluid acrylic
Nuvo Deluxe adhesive
From stash: glitter paper, metallic cardstock, card scraps