Paper Smooches: Designer Drafts challenge

I came across Paper Smooces challenge blog yesterday and I thought I’d give the sketch a go using Paper Smooches Botanicals 2 as the main focus of my card. When deciding how to “design” my card I noticed that one of the branches from Botanicals 2 actually looks a little like mistletoe when turned upside down and that settled the deal for me: I would create a Christmas card using non-holiday themed stamps.

The sketch divides the background in two towards the bottom and for that to work for me, I simply chose to dry emboss the lower third of my background to get a sublte look while still sticking to the sketch.

Earlier this week Jennifer Mcguire posted a video showing a terrific technique for adding dimension to solid stamps using coloured pencils. Since I’ve bought Prismacolor pencils (also inspired by Jennifer Mcguire) I decided to give the technique a go. Not only is it really easy to do, it also completely transforms the look of the stamped image:

Clearly there’s nothing wrong with the image on the left side but I can see myself get rather attached to adding some extra details to solid images this way. It made SO much difference and looks terrific (if I do say so myself…). I added the mistletoe berries using Eanger Enamel Accents which is a really cool product that lets you create the look of enamel really easily. Fun stuff!

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