Vintage Santa in Shades of Brown

This is my entry for Week 2 of the Twelve Tags of Christmas Funkie Junkie Style challenge. In addition, I am entering in the following five challenges:

• Simon Says Stamp and Show - One Color (shades of brown)
• Our Creative Corner - Fabulous Faces
• Fashionable Stamping Challenges - Coffee and Cream with a Hint of Dark Chocolate
• Charisma Cardz Challenges - Embossing (Heat or Dry)
• Catered Crop Follow the Recipe - the ingredients I used are listed at the end of this post

I am getting pretty far behind in the Funkie Junkie challenge, but I think I'll be catching up now. I got a little stuck on week 2 and just stayed stuck instead of moving on to some of the other weeks and then coming back (I did manage to do week 4). Linda's inspiration tag is beautiful (see below), but I just couldn't get it together. I did make an ornament a couple of weeks ago, but did not like it at all. I think it was because I was trying to use the same colors that Linda used and they just weren't coming together in a way that I liked. When I decided to try a different color combination, that worked much better for me. The inspiration pieces I took from this tag were the shabby flower, the flourishes and snowflakes in the background and the snowflake embellishments.

The Santa image I used is a stamp that was created exclusively for members of a stamping forum that I belonged to several years ago. I really like this image a lot, but have only used it once or twice before. It is so big I have a hard time coming up with designs where it doesn't cover everything else up. I stamped it with Versafine Vintage Sepia ink on tan cardstock. I cut it out with a rectangle nestie and matted it with a scalloped rectangle. I pierced the scallops and sponged the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

I don't own the Tim Holtz tattered florals die, so I used what I had to make my flower. I made the bottom layer by gathering a circle of tea-colored lace. The other two layers are made from silk flowers. They started out as white. I painted them with cream color acrylic paint and sponged them with Walnut Stain Distress Ink. They ended up a little too dark so I dry brushed just a little more of the acrylic paint over the top. After I layered the flower, I sprayed it with some homemade glimmer spray and added the jewelry finding and pearl in the center. I really like this flower and think I'll be doing a lot more painting on silk flowers. I buy the cheapo ones at Walmart or Dollar Tree so they are kind of tattery looking on the edges, which I think adds to their shabby look. Pretty cool.

The bottom layer of the card is dark brown Bazzil cardstock that I embossed with a Sizzix texture plate. After embossing I sanded the top lightly. Since the Bazzil doesn't have a white core, it just lightened up the high spots and left it darker in the recesses, which added some dimension to the background. The edge piece is dark cream color paper that I stamped with flourishes and snowflakes using Walnut Stain Distress Ink. I then sponged more of the DI on the edges and added a piece of the same lace from the flower on the edge. The piece under the image is a scrap piece of DP I had. I crumpled it then flattened back out and roughed up the edges by scraping the sharp edge of my scissors along them. I then inked the edges with the Walnut Stain ink.

For the snowflakes I stamped more of the flourishes on a scrap piece of ivory cardstock with the Walnut Stain ink and brushed them with bronze color Perfect Pearls. I punched them out, layered them, and added a button and some twine to the centers.

Here are the ingredients I used from the inspiration cards on the Catered Crop Challenge:

Papers: Pattern paper

Stamps: Men

Color Mediums: Glimmer Mist (my own homemade kind)

Embellishments: Lace, buttons, pearls, twine

Tools: Die cuts, punches

I don't often say this about my own work, but I really like this card. I really like how the different challenges that I participate in stretch my creativity. I probably would never have made a completely brown Christmas card otherwise. I also like finding my own ways to do the same types of things without having a lot of the tools and supplies that my budget doesn't allow. It really stretches my creativity and gives me ides for doing other things.

Well, I think I've rambled on long enough. Thanks for stopping by!