Winterfresh Christmas Card & Pine Branch Tutorial

Hello Everyone!

I would also like to thank everyone who dropped in and left me a congratulation message on my last post! I was just thrilled to see so many wonderful and kind comments! Thank you so much everyone for always making me smile!

I have another Christmas card to share with you today. This one was inspired by an artist I have only recently had the joy of getting to know, ASTRID MACLEAN. She is just so incredibly creative and talented, and I have been learning a lot from her the last couple of months. This card is loosely based on a combination of two of Astrid's Christmas cards that you can find on her blog here...Astrid's Artistic Efforts.

Thank you Astrid for being such an amazing inspiration!

For the background I painted a piece of card stock with white paint and used a Memory Box stencil called Lanthenay with some home-made texture paste to make that beautiful pattern down in the right hand corner. I used Tim Holtz distress ink sprays Iced Spruce, Weathered Wood, Bundled Sage and Brushed Pewter to colour the paper. I stamped some branches using Ranger Archival ink Library Green and an Inkadinkado pine branch stamp.

I cut the frame out of acetate using a Sizzix Ornament 2 die and then covered it with chunky glitter and edged it with my Krylon Silver Leafing Pen. I dabbed a little white paint on the top to give it a frosty look. The beautiful bird stamp is from Artistic Outpost.

The 25 was cut using Tim Holtz Vintage Noel die, and then I used my distressed metal technique to give it a wintery, metallic feel. I used UTEE, platinum, white and aqua embossing powders on a dark teal card stock.

I have had some questions about how I do my 3D pine branches, so I have included a short tutorial for you today. These pine branches were cut from silver metallic paper and covered with clear chunky glitter and then dabbed with DecoArt White paint. I'm not even going to bother explaining how much more shimmery they are in real life, my camera is apparently a SCROOGE and refuses to cooperate when it comes to glittery Christmas cards!!

HOW DID I DO THAT:

1. You will a piece of card stock, some wire and the Cheery Lynn Cutie Fringe 2 die.
2. Cut out the Cutie Fringe using your die cutting machine and cut a piece of wire about 6 inches long.

3. Glue the end of the wire to one end on the fringe. I glue it to the inside of the die cut (the rough side).
4. Twirl your fringe around the wire on an angle, adding a little glue here and there as you go.

For this sample I used HALF of the Cutie Fringe and a 3 inch piece of wire to make a longer branch with not too much fullness (better for mailing). If you use the whole fringe cut out and a larger wire, you can twirl it at less of an angle and you will get a more full, longer branch.

I wanted to share a couple of photographs that PATRICIA COOK sent to me. She gave the 3D pine branch a try and really liked how it turned out. Here is what she made using the branches. Patricia doesn't have a blog, so I wanted to share them on her behalf. Aren't these sleighs fantastic! Thanks so much Patricia!

I am entering my Winterfresh Christmas card into the following wonderful challenges:

- Artistic Inspirations - Challenge #122 - Anything Goes / Merry Christmas
- Artist Trading Post - Let's Celebrate

- Sweet Stamps Challenge Blog - #200 - Non-traditional Christmas Colors
- Get Creative Challenges - #4 - Use Blue and White or Silver
- Card Mania - Challenge #62 - Christmas
- Creative Moments - #58 - Anything Goes / Non-traditional Christmas Colours

- Sketchy Colors - #238 - Grey, White and Blue

- Just Us Girls - #271 - Trend Week - Mixed Media

That's it for today. Thank you for stopping in and for all the amazing comments. I read and appreciate every single one! If you have any questions, please let me know.