Holiday Wrap

This is the project that I did for our monthly Dirty Dozen/Dirty Dozen Alumni Challenge.  Jami  gave us a wonderful theme to work with along with a couple of interesting requirements and restrictions.

Challenge Focus: A Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Card inspired by a childhood holiday memory or favorite thing about the season. Tell us about the memory or inspiration in your gallery description

Required Element: Wrapping paper. Use a piece of holiday wrapping paper on your card in some way.

Restricted Element: No snowflake stamps, papers or embellishments.

My Special Memory

I dug around in our big collection of wrapping paper and found just the perfect thing. It was paper that had multiple vignettes repeated over and over and my favorite was a snow family out gathering their holiday tree. I grew up on 300 acres of gorgeous farm land right outside of Charleston, WV. We never, ever purchased Christmas trees. Our parents would bundle us all up (4 girls) and we would walk the woods on our property to find just the right tree. As you can imagine these trees were never perfect as they had not had the attention and pruning that purchased tree have but they were always *perfectly wonderful* to us. We thought our father could do anything in the world as he cut down our tree and let us girls help him pull it home. He was beloved in the eyes of his daughters and well adored. No flaw in our tree could ever mar our love for both of our parents. Christmas in our home was all about "family" and I still hold these memories dear and close to my heart even though both my parents are gone. Mother and Daddy…you will always live in the hearts of your girls.

Creating My Card

I cut out several of the little blocks and attached them to cardstock with Mod Podge to make them stiff enough to apply to my card front.  I cut out the main image layer of the snowmen and left off the trees. I cut the little snow child and snowbaby out to pop up over the original layer to add dimension and embossed each piece with clear embossing powder to match the shine of the trees. I stamped one tree with Stazon and cut out to be the tree "cut" for Christmas. I ran a strip of glossy paper through a crimper to attach to the base of the card and lightly sponged a little Baja ink on it to match some of the blue on the snow family.  I loved the little birds and cut them out to pop up on the snow base.

I stamped the trees across the main layer of white glossy paper using green Stazon and then heat embossed with clear embossing powder. I used a small handmade cloud template and sponged Baja Breeze ink onto the sky area with an ink blending tool. I left the ground area totally plain to allow the glossy white show for the snow. I started assembling the card by adhering the main image layer on the scene of trees and then attached the popped up pieces.  I attached the strip of base snow with mounting tape and applied the little red birds to the snow.

I created the sentiment on my computer and cut and layered it with Nestabilities dies. I loved adding the dark green satin multi loop bow with the sentiment tag attached. I popped up the little gathered tree in front of the family and attached the little birds. This was a timely project but it was wonderful fun using wrapping paper.

Stamps:  Kittie Kits The Moose is Loose

Paper:  Glossy White, Red, Wrapping Paper

Ink:  Olive Green Stazon, Baja Breeze

Accessories:  CLear Embossing Powder, Mod Podge, Crimper, Satin, Glue Dots, Dimensionals, Snips, Inkssentials Ink Blending Tool, Nestabilities, Mounting Tape