3 Things - Not-so-usual Christmas Cards {by Ellen Schrik}

For this challenge, PaperArtsy sends the same three items to 3 people from the blogging team. It is really interesting to see how each maker comes up with different ideas and techniques with the same 3 items. They have no clue what PaperArtsy HQ is going to send, the whole idea is to do something crafty in their personal style restricted to these 3 items.

And for this month they invited me to be a guest designer for this challenge.

Hi, my name is Ellen Schrik (ellen_schrik_crea), I am from the Netherlands. I was so excited when the PaperArtsy crew asked me if I wanted to be a guest designer on the blog. Of course I said yes and shortly after that I received the items shown below.

So let's take a look at what I received from PA HQ ...

As I love quirky stamps, I was delighted to receive this Zinski Art Stamp set ZA35 by ZinskiArt. They are such happy and funny creatures! The stamps came with this deep orange Fresco Finish Acrylic paint Rusty (FF227) and a snow or confetti like stencil PS245 by PaperArtsy.

Here's a little sneak peak of what I came up with:

These items are perfect for not-so-usual Christmas cards, so let's see what I've created.

As one of the items was a Fresco Finish paint, I knew I wanted to go for gel printing. I discovered gel printing in spring 2013 and I immediately fell in love with the technique. I bought a gel plate and never stopped printing and exploring since.

For this post I made a bunch of gel prints using the Rusty colour I received and adding only a blue, Beach Hut (FF43) and a pink, Orchid (FF13). For texture all I used was bubble wrap. The effect of the different sizes of bubble wrap is simply wonderful, even with just one layer.

(Fun fact: I was published in Craft Stamper magazine in October 2013 with an article on gel printing, also using bubble wrap.)

For this project I used my 5 x 7 " and my 8 x 10" gel plates for a happy gel printing afternoon.

The Rusty orange and the Beach Hut (FF43) blue go well together and they make a wonderful green where they overlap. I did the same with Rusty and Orchid (FF13). It came out beautifully.

I just love the effect of bubble wrap! And it is only one layer!

Here you can see some of the masterboards/prints I made on both A4 and A5 sized paper. I used 160gms printing paper for this. I often like my prints so much that I don't want to cut them up, and just keep them, but I had to be brave this time.

Now on with the stencil:

The Stencil PS245 reminds me of falling snow, perfect for Christmas cards.

On two of the cards I used snow-like embossing powder from WOW Embossing with glitter in it. After all, Christmas and glitter go hand in hand....

I love how well the embossed dots work with the bubble wrap texture!

For the third card I didn't heat emboss; instead I added orange dots with ink through the stencil as a kind of confetti.

.Time to work on my focal critters!

I started by stamping all the characters from the Zinski Stamp Set ZA35 in black ink on white card.

At first I wanted to just stamp the images onto white card, cut them out and stick them onto the cards. I like the effect of a white image.

Then I decided to colour one of the images lightly, just to see what it would look like. I used my Derwent Inktense pencils.

As much as I like the striking effect of a white, fussy-cut image, this time I liked the lightly coloured version better. It was more in cohesion with the background. So I decided to colour all of them in.

I like this type of colouring: only some patches of colour here and there on the image. Kate Crane inspired me to try it this way and now I often use it, especially on these type of images.  Thank you so much for your inspirational posts Kate!

And here are the three cards I made. With one, two and three little creatures.

And each one apart:

So these are my not-so-usual Christmas cards. And as I have some gel prints and some cut out images left, I think I am going to make some more.

Extra layers and some easily overlooked details add depth and interest to your creations, even when you do not notice them immediately. Here's what I added:

I stamped two more layers onto the card: after the heat embossing I stamped with Kate Crane's set KC005 in orange and in dark brown ink. For some stamps I did not use a block to stick the stamp to, but held the stamp in my hand for partial printing.

But it did not all go quite as planned. On the tall card I stamped first and then heat embossed, but the dark ink was not totally dry. So when I sprinkled embossing powder over the snowflakes, some of the stamped background on the right caught some powder too. It was a kind of happy accident.

I also added some faux stitching and zig zags. I used an old tracing wheel, used for sewing, to track around the edges of the card, then slowly traced the lines with a black fineliner, following the little holes.

The text on the Zinski Art Stamp Set ZA35 is perfect for cutting up into strips. They were stamped on white paper, cut out and edged with black ink and/or a fineliner pen.

Paint, gel printing, a stencil and quirky stamps is a great combination for me.

I had lots of fun creating these. Thank you so much for your interest in my little journey here, I really appreciate it. And a big thank you to the PaperArtsy crew for having me. It was a great honour.

With love,

Ellen

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