Freestyle Saturday Christmas

Hi everyone today is the fifth Saturday which means it is Freestyle challenge over at Hiding In My Craft Room. The design team all month have been creating projects using Christmas in July as the theme. I've had a lot of fun and now am ahead doing my Christmas cards.

This week the challenge is sponsored by MHK Designs who will be giving away three products to one lucky winner. If you have not checked out MHK Designs digital stamps check them out as not only are the stamps and digital papers reasonably priced but they are gorgeous. Especially if you love vintage images like I do. :-)

For this challenge I was given Season Greetings which was just released last month. I've had so much fun with this set and I think this is going to one of my go to sets to use for creating Christmas cards.

I had fun doing the background. I wish you could see all the silver lines and shimmer from using Liquid Metal as water color paint and crumpled tissue paper.

I used a scallop circle from my library in Silhouette Studio. At one time the nested scallop circles was a freebie. There is no rule that you can't by stretching turn a circle into an oval. I then filled my oval with gradient colors.

I resized my image in Silhouette Studio to fit into the oval. Then using the image effects option I turned my black and white image into a green one.  Then after printing  and sealing my print the fun began. I used Peeled Paint distress ink as paint and a tiny brush to add more color to the tree .  I used Dollar Tree watercolor pencils for the bird and the burlap fabric around the tree wetting the tip first. I hate to admit it but I like these inexpensive watercolor pencils better than some more expensive ones I have.. The ornaments and star were painted with Inkadinkado iridescent watercolor paints. Wish the photo showed the beautiful sheen.

For my next card I decided to use the vintage looking Santa along with the NOEL sentiment. At first I was going to leave the Santa uncolored but decided to go ahead and color.

I decided to go with a blank background only wrapping decorative ribbon around the card base. The ribbon was a lucky find at a thrift store recently.

In Silhouette Studio I drew my rounded corner shape. Then I did an internal offset to create a smaller shape. The large shape I filled in with a pattern instead of cutting it out of corrugated cardboard since it would be flatter for mailing. The smaller shape was filled in with color. The two shapes were grouped together and the Santa which came in png format layered on top. Although I had played with doing the lines of Santa different colors I decided to stick with black lines for this card.

After printing and cutting out I lightly rubbed paste wax over my image. When dried I buffed and started coloring with .Spectrum Noir markers. One advantage I discovered of using the paste wax was the markers easily glided on and there was no bleeding through to the back. I brushed on Faber Castell white water color with a fine brush for the fur and facial hair. I had to paint several layers using an almost dry brush to try to cover the background without losing the details. Now that I've learned how to color inkjet prints with water color paint I'm having fun.

I left NOEL the size it originally was. After printing out I used a clear glitter Gellyroll pen by Sakura to add detail.  I cut it to size and inked around the edge with distress ink. I think either matting or edging with ink adds a little bit of a professional look to things like sentiments.

I'm entering these cards in the MHK Designs challenge. You can find the details here:
http://mhkdesignsbymynn.blogspot.com/2017/07/july-challenge.html

As well as the July Happy Little Stampers  Christmas Challenge details here:
http://www.happylittlestampers.com/2017/07/hls-july-christmas-challenge.html

Thank you for stopping by I hope I have inspired you to create some Christmas cards. Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!