Hello crafters -- I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Today, Black Friday officially marks the start of the Christmas season. So with all the hustling and bustling of the holiday season, I wanted to remind and wish you this:
As we continue with Ellen's 10th anniversary celebration (and I am very blessed and most honored to say that I've been on board with Ellen 9 of the past 10 years!), I am focusing on two long-time Ellen Hutson favorites, Inchie Arts and Paper Smooches! Here's how this 5" piece of art came together:
I started by die cutting a snow hill from Essentials by Ellen 40 Lb. Vellum with My Favorite Things Snow Drifts dies. Then I placed removable adhesive on the back and placed the template along the bottom of an Inchie Arts 4" white Art Square. I like using the sturdy vellum as a template -- as you can see, it has been previously used and loved! Plus, being transparent helps with placement, too!
Next, I applied Ranger Perfect Medium directly from the ink pad to the top portion of the Art Square, then used the largest Perfect Pearls Brush Pair to apply Perfect Pearls in Blue Patina to create the sky:
Then I used a Ranger Ink Blending Tool to pounce and really work the Perfect Pearls into the Art Square and Perfect Medium:
Next, I removed the snow drift template and used a fresh Replacement Foam on my Ink Blending Tool to apply Perfect Medium to the snow drift:
Then I applied Confetti White Perfect Pearls to create the snow:
One property I love about Art Squares is the ability to use dies to emboss them! I used Paper Smooches Stitched Flourishes 2 dies and placed them in the upper right corner.
TIP: Sandwich the Art Square between a folded piece of copy paper -- this will protect your Big Shot plates from getting Perfect Pearls smooshed onto them AND will prevent the cuts on your die cutting plates from being being embossed into the Art Square.
Below you can see the pretty embossed die results! Next, I used my Embossing Magic Bag where I wanted the snowflake stamp heat embossed:
For easy stamping results, I positioned the Paper Smooches A Holy Holiday stamps onto the Art Square inside my MISTI.
First I inked only the snowflake with Versamark, stamped it, then heat embossed it with White Ranger Super Fine Embossing Powder. Then I removed the snowflake from my MISTI, inked just the "wishing you", heart, star and deer stamps with Versamark and stamped them.
TIP: The first stamping will remove some of the Perfect Pearls and I found out from trial and error that this usually didn't leave enough Versamark on the Art Square to get a good heat embossing. So with the magic of the MISTI, just ink and stamp those stamps again, to get good ink coverage. Then heat emboss with Gold Super Fine Embossing Powder:
Next, remove the "wishing you", heart, star and deer stamps and repeat the inking and double stamping process with the remaining stamps. Heat emboss with Silver Super Fine Embossing Powder:
To finish the piece, I layered it with foam tape onto a square of pretty gold glittery Tim Holtz Deco Sheet, and onto a 5-inch Bazzill Robin's Egg card base. This piece could also be framed and used as holiday art!
Thanks so much for joining me today and kicking off the holiday season, as well as Ellen's 10th anniversary celebration!
