Santa Magic

Hi Friends,

Thanks for popping by. I hope everyone had a good week and are enjoying their weekend.  Happy Mother's Day to all mamma's out there too. 

I have yet another Christmas card to share with you today.  I am currently finding Christmas cards slightly easier to make than any other card type as I slowly get my crafting mojo back after a huge crafting absence.  Saying that my crafting mojo all but disappeared this week!! I was struggling to come up with any ideas but really wanted to make a card. When I saw the theme at Merry Monday Challenge was to add a star and that the current monthly Christmas challenge at Happy Little Stampers had the optional twist of stars, I knew a starry card just had to be made.

When rummaging through my supplies I came across a fab star stencil from Create a Smile that I bought years ago but have never used! (Like the majority of my crafty stuff!)  I also remembered Francine Vuilleme had made a couple of fantastic cards with this stencil. So...I took inspiration from her and CAS'ed one of her cards. I love her cards and her colouring is fantastic.

Here is my card:

 Supplies:

MFT Stamps - Merry Everything

MFT Die-namics - Merry Everything

MFT Stamps - Mirror Image

MFT Die-namics - Snow Drifts

Create a Smile Stencil - Wave of Stars

Strathmore Bristol Cardstock

Xpress It - Blending Card

Distress Ink - Tumbled Glass, Broken China, Salty Ocean, Faded Jeans

Dreamweaver Embossing Paste - White

Stampendous Embossing Powder - Crystal Transparent

 Memento Ink - Tuxedo Black 

Versafine Ink - Onyx Black

Copic Multiliner - Black 0.3

This card was a bit of a challenge for me as I wanted the sky to be blended ink....and, well, I have always been scared of blended ink backgrounds.  The few times I have tried they have turned out terrible and ended in the bin. I just couldn't get a good blend at all and became disheartened and have avoided them.  I recently managed to get my hands on some Bristol smooth cardstock so I thought I would give it another try. I am not going to tell you how long it took to do but lets just say I took it really, really slow and managed to create one that was card worthy :) 

I wanted to use the adorable Santa from MFT Merry Everything stamp set for a couple of reasons. Firstly, he has never been inked up :( and I thought this image would work well as I could make it look like he was releasing the wave of stars from his hand. However, I wanted my image on the left hand side of the card and.he was holding the wrong hand up! It was time to try some mirror stamping again. I had to go over a few areas with a copic multiliner hence why the stamped image doesn't look as sharp as I would like.  Then, I had to figure out how to die-cut him! Once all that was done I coloured him with copics.  

I created the snow drifts with my MFT dies and worked out where exactly I wanted to place Santa on my card before I added the stars. I used some white embossing paste with the stencil and while its was still wet added some crystal embossing powder. Once the paste was dry I heat embossed the powder. I popped Santa onto my card with some foam dots. The sentiment is a freebie I received with a cardmaking mag ages ago. It is stamped directly onto the snow drift. I used my MISTI to ensure it was straight!  I then adhered the scene to some dark blue generic cardstock before adhering to my card base.

I would also like to enter this card into the following challenge:

• Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Ombre 

Thanks so much for popping by, enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Hugs Ax