Friday 23 September 2016

Joy!

This card, a response to  Global Design Project's GDP#054 sketch Challenge, represents something of a  learning curve for me and since learning how to do new things is one of my favourite activities, making it was a pleasurable experience.

The first thing I learnt was that it's extremely tricky to emboss watercolour paper. I was happy with my lightly sponged background and muted green/brown tree, and wanted to finish it off with a gold star and baubles. The gold star went okay, but the baubles just didn't stick. I was going to throw it out and start again, but then paused, looked at what I'd done and realised I'd ended up with a light dusting of gold on the whole image, which I really liked - so I went ahead and heat embossed it anyway. (I assure you that is gold dust and not dirt, but I know it didn't photograph very well.)
My next issue was what to mount my tree on. Nothing seemed to work, until I hit upon the idea of making my own background (a JoMo DSP!) by layering two Kaisercraft clear stamps - a square music one in stamped-off Cherry Cobbler, and  'Script' embossed in gold.

My last barrier was when I realised I don't really have many sentiments that are Christmassy - (a problem I intend to remedy forthwith!). For the last 25 years, my Christmas cards have been a very simply mounted photo of our two children. I've had a copy of each photo mounted in similar frames and they're on the wall in a big 5x5 square that, as I'm sure you can imagine, tells the story of how they've grown up.

Now, however, my son has moved to England and so I have to make actual Christmas cards (and live with getting a bit tearful whenever I think he won't be home for Christmas). Anyway, I found this little Heidiswapp 'joy' in a 2013 set of 9 stamps and thought the sentiment apt and the size and shape perfect.

Made using
Paper: Stampin' Up Very Vanilla and Cherry Cobbler, The Art Department watercolour
Ink: Stampin' Up Mossy Meadow, Cherry Cobbler, Chocolate Chip
Stamps: Stampin' Up Thoughtful Branches, Totally Trees (the star), Kaiser Art Script and Music, Heidiswapp sentiment.
Other: Franceville adhesive rhinestone

4 comments:

  1. What a beautiful tree and love your layout JoMo! Thank you for visiting my blog! Hugs.

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  2. Great card Jo! Love your JoMo Special DSP and the sentiment is very apt indeed. I also enjoyed the story of the card's creation.

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  3. Beautiful simplicity! Thanks for playing along with this week's sketch challenge at the Global Design Project!

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  4. Great little details and touches of flair! Thank-you for taking the Global Design Project Challenge - Krista Frattin from Canada

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