Vintage Magnolia Santa

I made this card for the 12 Tags of Christmas Funkie Junkie Style Challenge. Each week for 12 weeks, Linda is posting a tag to use as inspiration. Participants do not have to create a tag. They can create a tag, card, art piece - anything at all. The only requirement is to use something from the posted tag as inspiration for whatever you create. I'm a little behind. The challenge is on week 4 and this is my project for the week 1 inspiration. Good thing we have until December 15 to link all 12 of the projects. I had a hard time getting started. At first I thought I wanted to create one big overall project, such as an altered book, and have each week's project be a part of that larger project. But I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do or what I would really do with it once I was finished. For me, the things I make also need to be practical. So in the end, I decided to just make whatever I was inspired to make for each week's inspiration and not try to have everything come together in one piece. I may make a card, a tag, a gift card holder, an ornament or whatever.

You can see Linda's inspiration tag for the week 1 challenge here on her blog. For this week's challenge I chose to make a card. The inspirations from Linda's tag are:

• Vintage
• Santa
• Kraft + 1 color (I used red instead of green)
• Gold accents
• Paper rosette behind the sentiment

My Santa image is from Magnolia and I colored him with Prismacolor pencils blended with Gamsol. The Be Merry sentiment is stamped with Fired Brick Distress Ink and cut out with a Nestabilities label die. I hand-stitched around the outside of the background with fine gold cord. The "Grand Christmas" piece is part of a Boston toy store advertisement that I downloaded from The Graphics Fairy. I inked everything with Vintage Photo Distress Ink and sprayed with a homemade glimmer spray made from Vintage Photo Distress Ink and Aztec Gold PearlEx powder. Some of the mist came out in bigger droplets than I would have liked. To finish it off, I added some red gems, gold sheer ribbon, a paper rosette and a stick pin.

I'm looking forward to doing more projects for this challenge. I really admire Linda's work. Thanks for looking!