Kraft Santa

Today's card was inspired by the sketch @ Christmas Card Throwdown and the theme @ the Merry Christmas Challenge. I will also be applying it to the March Anything Goes Christmas Challenge @ Happy Little Stampers.

The stamp set I used is from A*Muse Studio and is called "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"...at the time of writing this post, it is on sale for 50% off for only $15 and it is a huge set with 2 different santas plus a ton of sentiments! (Don't mind the reflection of the twinkle lights in my photo below...I have them strung around the bulletin board that is hung above my desk to help illuminate the wall above my stamping area, lol)

  I used a top folded kraft A2 size card base and Black Licorice ink for all the images. To make sure the presents lined up exactly where I wanted them to a -sitting perfectly in the santa's hands, I stamped the santa first using my new Stamp Perfect tool on my both my scrap of kraft and on white typing paper. I then removed the santa stamp and stamped just the presents on the typing paper -one at a time -to check the placement and when I got it right where it needed to be, (which happened on the first try because these stamps are so awesomely indexed and cut!) I left those 2 stamps on the lid of the Stamp Perfect, swapped the white paper out for my kraft paper with the santa already stamped on it and stamped the presents one final time.

I then colored up the santa with colored pencils...accenting the silver buckle and the ribbon on the presents with a clear Stardust pen, a silver gel pen and silver Wink of Stella. I used the clear Wink of Stella to add a bit of sparkle to anything that was white. I closely trimmed around the santa with my micro-tipped scissors so that I could pop him up in the card front later. The small strips of red and green were trimmed using my paper cutter, the ornate label was diecut and the HoHoHo sentiment stamped in the middle. I then used the silver Wink of Stella to also color the outside edge of the sentiment diecut.

Next came the details of card assembly and adding just a bit more 'bling" to the card front. The card stock strips were adhered to the left side of the card and a strip of thin silver glitter washi tape was added to the center of the largest green strip. I cut a piece of the silver metallic trim and coiled it into a circle, securing it to the back side of my cut out kraft santa with the same foam dots I use to pop it on to the card front. I then decided it was still missing "something"...so I trimmed around the typing paper santa from earlier and used it to mask my santa while I splashed my Fun Stampers Journey Silver Silk across the card front. That was exactly what the card needed to be complete!

Now that my project is finished, it will go on the small pile of cards that I hope to continue to add to  all year long, so that I am prepared when the Holiday season rolls around in 2017!