Merry & Bright

A few weekends ago my husband and I traveled to Kansas City for a car show where his brother had a car entered into the competition.  While we were there, we walked around a lot and saw the others cars that were there, but we also had a lot of time just sitting around.  I knew it would be that way, so in my quest for a great Christmas Card, I had stamped several card fronts onto Canson 96# Bristol Watercolor Paper to take with me to watercolor.  This Canson paper is super smooth and much whiter than my Canson 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Paper. I put those watercolor panels into a stamp pocket to keep them clean, grabbed a water brush and about 5 different greens in Distress Markers and in Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens so I could think about how I wanted to watercolor them and in which shade of green.

This 1940's Vintage Panel Truck was our second favorite of the car show after my brother-in-law's car.   There were so many great vehicles at this show which was the Boyd Coddington Inaugural All Speed Expo.  It was pretty fantastic being there for my brother and sister-in-law 's first place finish in the 1960-1990 Custom Category.  Okay, back to cards now....

I had kind of mocked up what I thought I would do for this card and even had one die cut in the gold glitter paper for my prototype.  In the end, I didn't actually color any of these at the car show and only colored all 17 of them yesterday.

I didn't stick with one color or type of marker for these, choosing instead to do each one however I saw it at the moment I was painting it.  So, there's a variety of greens in these.  The newest Distress Marker from Tim Holtz is "Lucky Clover" and I thought I would use that color for the images.  Lucky Clover is a gorgeous color of Kelly Green but it's really not a deep enough green for the holly leaves in this Hero Arts Holly Jolly Stamp Set.  There is a coordinating Holly Jolly die cut for this set as well, but I didn't ever plan to use it for this card. I knew I wanted the Mama Elephant "Merry" die using DCWV Gold Glitter Card Stock, so I used Simon Says Stamp Ultra Fine Detail Gold Embossing Powder for the holly leaves and the "& Bright" part of the sentiment. If I would have thought of it sooner, WOW! Metallic Gold Glitter Embossing Powder would have been beautiful also.  But I'm okay with how it looks.  I was hurrying when I stamped and heat embossed these panels.

I tried several other green family distress markers including Forest Moss and Pine Needles but ultimately I used Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens in Green and Dark Green.  There you have it - no need to buy all of the colors of those pens because you can make any color you want from the basic set of 36 Pens.  In fact, I have purchased 4 additional markers outside of that set and I have yet to find an image that they are suitable for.  Persian Green is one such color but in reality it is a teal color and not green at all.

There are also holly berries included in the dies, but I stamped these with Versamark and heat embossed them with WOW! Primary Apple Red Embossing Powder.  After I had assembled all of the card fronts to the card bases, I went over the berries with a coat of Glossy Accents.  That was about 8 p.m. last night so with the way I had them lined up, they could dry overnight.  Any time I try to hurry Glossy Accents, I always mess them up by sticking a finger or some such into them!

I used Ranger Multi Medium Matte to adhere the "Merry" die cut to the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle watercolor panel.  I really like that there is so much white space in this design. I hadn't known until recently that I have a strong preference for really bold graphics.  The Mama Elephant dies are my favorites among my dies and are the handwriting of one of the owner mom's.  I still need to stamp a sentiment on the inside of these cards before I start sending them out but these are primarily for immediate family. This is a clean and simple design that I am very happy with.

I'll be entering this in the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge which is still "Anything Goes" but already has 738 other entries!  Thanks for stopping by today.  I have several projects in the planning stages so I'll be back soon.