CAS-ual Fridays for the Holidays

Okay, getting my mind ready for the holidays--maybe you didn't notice I'm doing so many holiday cards in my latest challenges.....So, back at CAS-ual Fridays for their Embossing Challenge!  Their sponsor is The Stamps of Life and the winner gets to choose 2 stamp sets!  Their stamps are very cool--very practical, very cute, quirky, and very affordable (with really cheap shipping too!)  I may treat myself anyway...I've been very good with my scrap spending, but I really want to get more stamps!!! So, here goes the challenge!

I knew I wanted to do my favorite emboss, resist technique with my Distress Inks, and it took me quite a while to get this together the way I saw it in my head.  I stamped each individual letter with Perfect Medium (clear embossing ink by Ranger) and used white embossing powder.  This was pretty tedious, but I like the result.  I covered the page with three different Distress Inks--Wild Honey, Peeled Paint, and Faded Jeans.  I dropped water on after to get that droplet effect and finished with a little mist I made with Perfect Pearls and water.  (Can you tell I LOVE Ranger products??)

I went through quite a few incarnations of this card and I thought I would share my creative thought process with you.  Don't you ever look at other people's creations and think "How did they come up with that?"

Here's the first version I did.  I was having trouble getting the words Merry Christmas to fall properly within the tree shape, so I switched to Happy Holidays and tried with colored pigment inks and clear, sparkle embossing powder.

Didn't like it too much--I thought the effect of the colors for the H (star) and S (tree trunk) looked a bit weird and didn't read the way I wanted it to.  So, I went to white embossing powder with Perfect Medium. I still wanted to do a variety of colors, starting with yellow for the brightness of the "star" on top.

So, I hated this.  It feels very weird to write Happy Holidays in a Christmas tree shape, and the colors did not work.  I really like blues better for the holidays (we're Jewish, but I obviously sell Christmas cards). So another practice with the blues and greens.

Much closer!  I went with that, switched back to Merry Christmas and Voila! I'll just show it again so you don't have to scroll up (I know--so very very thoughtful....)

I'm pretty happy with the result.  This technique is SUPER easy and I think it has such awesome results.  Have fun getting all full of inks!

Cindy ScrappyV