Warm Wishes

Hey everyone...got some time today to tinker with my new stamps...not "MY" new stamps, but new to my collection stamps...These are from the new WalMart holiday sets, have you all seen these yet? They are a bit spendier than Studio G's $1 bin stamps, these ones are $3/set...BUT oh are they worth every penny. Mostly because they are cute. Not all the sets are as prize worthy as this "warm wishes" set though, some were only "so so" in my opinion. I do like that they are larger than Studio G's, these ones actually are decent sizes for cards!

(I've been sneaking one of these sets into the grocery shopping every week now...haha. I cant afford to buy all the sets I like at once, but I can swing the three bucks extra each week if I keep it hush hush. Although, I dont know why I even do that much, the mister has always told me he wants me to do what makes me happy and if that involves spending a little money so be it. I think I'd just rather hide it from MYSELF...lol)

So now on to the card...I wanted to go for a really Icy feeling for this card rather than a warm one, so I went with the frosty blues and teals. Before stamping the moose and sentiment, I took a cotton makeup square, and sponged the edges of the cardstock with a tealish blue studio g chalk ink, then using that same ink I stamped the edges with a couple different snowflake stamps. The reason I sponged the ink rather thank just swiping the edges with the ink pad itself was to get the softer, less intense coloring around the edges so that the snowflakes would appear slightly darker. I think it worked well.

Another trick I did on this card, I glittered my brads. I love the look of glittery brads, but I only had 4 left and I wanted to use more than just 4. So tell me, can you tell which ones were the manufactured glittered brads and which ones I did myself? Didn't think so! The four brads on the corners of the plaid patterned paper were the manufactured ones, those are Oriental Trading brand. The others I painted with a clear pearlescent glitter glue, use two or three thin coats though, otherwise the glitter isn't evenly distributed and it will look like you smeared the glitter off. (I just use a tiny paint brush to paint it on there.)

Now, here's another thing I wanted to mention, look at this first picture below. Looks fine right? I thought so too, then after I took the photo, I kept thinking "it's good but it needs *something*"...So I pulled out my cuttlebug and my snowflake die. PRESTO! Check out the second picture, better huh?! I glittered the die cuts too to tie in with the rest of the card. Heck I even glittered the liquid applique I used for the snow!! This card was a lot more involved than most of the cards I do, but it was oh so worth it for the final result!

***Supplies:

Paper: Bazzill Cardstocks, Dream Street Patterned Paper (from the enchanted collection), WalMart cheapie paper (the teal snowflake layer that you can hardly tell is there...lol)

Ribbon - Michaels

Mini Brads - Oriental Trading

Stamps - WalMart

Other - Marvy Liquid Applique, Glitter Glue, Studio G ink, Rubber Stampede ink, Cuttlebug snowflake die