Vintage Christmas Art Stamps with a Personal Touch

Good morning crafters! Who has been watching the Imagination Crafts shows on Hochanda? Have you seen the new Starlights colours? Loving the tones...me thinks Santa may like to visit Imagination HQ and while he's there, I rather like the Black Stars Sparkle Medium too...hint, HINT!!

This week I am using one of the Imagination Crafts Art Stamps to create a more vintage style card. I love this look at Christmas, the old fashioned traditional feel with muted colours and a flash of colour. For this particular card I also took a trip down memory lane...

When I looked at the Winter Robin Art Stamp, I immediately thought of him as a pure silhouette against a patterned background. I had the idea to dig out some of the sheet music I had inherited from my dad. I am not musical, but I do love the look of sheet music and I was itching to use some! It definitely made me smile, looking though the old books and imagining my dad singing along to it all. Right, apologies for the tangent there, back to business! Because I wanted a vintage feel, I decided to stamp the Winter Robin Art Stamp in Vintage Sepia Versafine Ink rather than black. I then embossed this and used a die from my stash to cut out the image and create a topper.

Once cut out, I used an Ink Blending Mat and Ink Blending Tool with some Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain Distress Ink to frame and age the topper.

I wanted to add just a small amount of colour to the card, so I kept the same two brown inks to colour the image slightly, but also added some Fired Brick Distress Ink for the robin's red breast. Again I used the Ink Blending Mat to do this, adding some of the ink to the mat and then shading using a brush and a tiny amount of water.

Right, now to make some background paper for my card. I cut a piece of Super Smooth Card to size and used an Ink Blending Tool to colour it with Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain Distress Ink. I then used the same inks to randomly stamp some of the tiny flourishes from the Hobby Art Poinsettia Stamp Set using the second and third generations of ink. Wanting to bring a tiny amount of the red into the background to make it all tie-in, I used the Merry Christmas sentiment from the same set and stamped all over with the Fired Brick.

Once I was happy with my background paper, I wanted to add just a touch of sparkle. To do this I reached for my favourite type of bling - Sparkle Medium! Not wanting to over-power my card topper, I used the Imagination Crafts Snowflake Stencil and placed it towards the top left-hand side of my card. I masked off a section I wanted to use with  Masking Tape and then used Welsh Gold Sparkle Medium through the stencil. I love this colour, it goes perfectly with browns and craft card...a hidden gem!

Whilst waiting for my sparkle to dry, I created a final dimensional piece for my card. I stamped the main poinsettia flower from the Hobby Art Poinsettia Stamp several times on some Watercolour Card. This was really for me to have a little play with some different ways of colouring! At first I water coloured the poinsettia with Fired Brick Distress Ink, then I used Welsh Gold Sparkle Medium and my finger to see what this would look like. I liked it, but thought that with the sparkle already on the card would be too much and would take away from the main topper. At this point I had a happy accident...I water coloured another of the poinsettias and noticed that it was slightly sparkly. Oooh er? Well, this was because I had been playing with my Starlights Paints and my paint water was all sparkly too!! (yes, you could say I was too lazy to go and change my water, but hey, ho!). I loved it. A slight glimmer, but not too much. Perfect.

Once dry and cut out, I made sure I added some of the brown inks to the back of my flower. This was primarily because I wanted to shape the poinsettia, and I hate the stark white peeking through if someone likes to have a good poke! (yes, perhaps a little mad, I know...)

I coloured a second flower to layer, this time cutting away the bottom leaves. Can you see the difference in sparkliness (is that a word?) when I used clean painting water for the top layer?! Some beads to add a raised middle and some shaping completed my flower.

Wanting to add a little tag, I made one freehand to fit the Merry Christmas from the Hobby Art Set, colouring, stamping and embossing as before.

With all the main elements created, and a bit of matting and layering...all done!

I hope you like it, and I hope dad doesn't mind about the music!

Lots of love

Martina

xxx