May Your Days Be Merry & Bright

Hi there, I hope your week is going well!

I love this gorgeous holly stamp from Ellen Hutson but I was struggling with it a bit because I always hit a mental block when I try to color leaves. So, I decided to watercolor using Distress Oxide inks which always yields beautiful results.

The stamp set I used is the Mondo Holly set from Ellen Hutson’s Essentials by Ellen line. I used a Wow Embossing Pad (a clear sticky ink) and gold Ranger Super Fine embossing powder to emboss the holly branch onto Strathmore Bristol Smooth cardstock. This was my first time using the Wow Embossing Pad and I was impressed with how well the embossing came out. I’ll have to play with it a bit more to decide whether or not it’s truly any different from the VersaMark pad that I usually use.

Using a small round watercolor brush, and a number of Distress Oxide inks, I took my time watercoloring the image. I smooshed the colors onto my glass work surface and then picked up a little bit of clean clear water with my brush before dipping it into the inks. I started with a more diluted light color, and then layered on darker, less diluted colors for some color variation. The colors I used were Evergreen Bough, Pine Needles, Abandoned Coral, Candied Apple, Frayed Burlap, and Vintage Photo. I cut out the branch with a Brother ScanNCut2 and set it aside to work on the background.

For the background, I used the same embossing powder to heat emboss a sentiment from the set onto an A2-sized panel of Neenah Solar White #80 Classic Crest cardstock. Then I used a round brush to splatter some Dr. Ph. Martin’s Iridescent Copper Plate Gold. I’d forgotten that I have this little bottle of liquid gold and I decided to use it here instead of gold watercolor.

To assemble the card, I used foam tape to adhere the holly branch and then trimmed off the tiny bit that hung off the top part of the card. Finally, I adhered the card front to an A2-sized card base.

Thanks so much for visiting!