Celebrate the Season

I had an opportunity to play with some new stamps and dies from Stampin Up (they won't be out until September 1), and I created this card with them.  I love how the colored background turned out, and I will try to explain it for you here.

I started by sponging some Broken China, Evergreen Bough, and Wild Honey distress inks onto some watercolor paper.  I spritzed them with water and let them dry a little bit.  I was not happy with the way that turned out - the honey color just looked weird with the other two colors.  So I sponged over the whole thing with more Broken China ink, but it couldn't cover up the honey color very well.  So I pulled out my Dusty Concord distress ink pad and smooshed it all over the top of the card and spritzed it with water.  Much better!  I picked up the piece and let some of the purple color drip down into the blue and I was thrilled!  I set it aside to dry completely before I could move on with the card.

One of the new dies from Stampin Up is called Sleigh Ride and I cut it out of white cardstock, leaving the bottom portion wide open so I would have room to stamp a sentiment.  The sentiment is from a new set called Happy Scenes and I stamped it with Eggplant ink (SU color).

After making sure that the watercolored background was completely dry, I used a white gel pen to dot some snowflakes all over.  Then I adhered the sleigh ride piece to the bottom, and matted it with some white cardstock and an Eggplant card base.  It's going to be the perfect card to send in the mail as it is nice and flat and mail-able!  :-)  I'm already planning to make several different backgrounds and see how they turn out with this same die and sentiment on them.