Christmas in July

I must admit I did find this really hard because I'm not really a Christmas person. It's not the same when you don’t have any children. Mind you my great nephews ages 3 and 6 tire me out!!!! And fill that void of missing out of having any children.

I looked at the challenges I wanted to enter and decided I could kill three birds with 1 stone!! As the saying goes.

Challengers are Indigoblu - Christmas in July, That's Crafty - use a stamp, PanPastels - bold and bright.

Firstly I folded A4 card for the base, then cut a black mat and a white mat. I gutted the black card, for any new people starting to craft this means I've cut out a rectangle within the mat but made sure that there is enough 'frame' to show when the white card is stuck on top.

On the white card mat I randomly stamped snowflakes with Versamark and then brushed on PanPastels.

I felt it needed to be brighter so i randomly stamped with distress ink. I didn’t bother to put the stamp on an acrylic block as this would have showed where the edges of the stamp would be.

I spread some Decopatch glue on my non stick craft mat then dabbed my stamp in it taking care not to dab too much glue because the imagine floods when stamped. I stamped onto some scrap card several times and heated with my heat gun to dry. It did bubble a bit but the snowflakes looked ok.

Once dry I applied PanPastels.

Then I die cut 3 baubles. My new crafty toy! I've been cutting all sorts of things.

Ruffed up the edges of the card and baubles with scissors.

Applied PanPastels to the edge of the baubles and white card.

On some scrap card I stamped the xmas tree with Versafine and applied 2 different embossing powders but you can't really see what I've done, I should have used a pigment ink that stayed wetter for longer.

To brighten it up I used PanPastels and then cut it out.

I edged the tree with the maker pen so that it lifted it from the background.

Before i stuck the pieces of card on the background i applied the liner to the baubles and tree and left to dry.

I then stuck them on the card.

Then used the green liner to make the baubles look as if they are hanging.

Voila my 1st Christmas card of the year! This is a 1st for me; I usually leave it till at least December or 1 week before Christmas!

Materials used

Indigoblu stamps

PanPastels - pewter, magenta, bright yellow green.

Waco glamour liner - green, crystal.

Versafine - Spanish moss

WOW - regular green, lime light.

Sizzix - big shot, bauble framelits.

Distress ink - picked raspberry.

Distress marker - crushed olive.

From my stash

Decopatch glue

Centura pearl card base

White and black card

Pva glue

Heat gun

Challenges entered;

Indigoblu

Thats Crafty

Panpastel uk