Shimmery Ornaments

Hello my Artzy friends! Hope everyone is having a great day so far. The weather here in Colorado has been up and down like a roller coaster. Monday it was cold with freezing drizzle and snow and today we’re on tap for a 72 degree day. Sometimes it’s hard to know how to dress because you never know what the weather will be like by mid-day.

Anyway, the chilly temps has me in a festive mood so I’m popping in today to share a fun way to color the Dare 2B Artzy Ornament Tangle stamp set to create an elegant looking holiday card.

To start, I cut a piece of black cardstock and stamped two of the ornament tangles onto the A2 size card panel using some Versamark ink. I made sure to use my anti-static powder tool beforehand to alleviate any stray embossing powders sticking to my cardstock. I sprinkled the stamped image with some Ranger Platinum embossing powder and I set that with my heat gun.

Next, I stamped the fun ornament dangle strings onto the cardstock and lined it up to appear to be linked to the ornament. I love how they look like they are one stamp. I heat set that as well.

The real pizazz starts with the coloring. I used some Finetec Metallic watercolors and began to color my images using a fine tip water brush. For this technique, you are not saturating the paper with water, but you will want to use a heavier cardstock. My black cardstock is 110lb.

Rather than adding the water directly to my card panel, I added some water to the Finetec water colors pallet and mixed it until it was a bit on the thicker side.

Once my brush was full of color, I painted in the different sections of the ornaments using several different colors. I kept one ornament more traditional with greens, red and a couple different shades of gold and the other ornament I chose more non-traditional colors with purple, teal, blue and pink. I just love the gorgeous shimmer with these metallic watercolors. They look stunning in person on the black cardstock. I did notice that with the Finetec water colors that they tend to look a little milky in places in certain light. I’m not sure if that’s a result of the cardstock or the makeup of the watercolors because they have mica in them. The end results are still stunning regardless.

With two of the ornaments colored, I set them aside to finish drying. I stamped and heat embossed the round ornament onto a scrap of the black cardstock using the same Platinum embossing powder.

I colored this one using the same water colors in traditional colors. Once it was dry I used the coordinating Dare 2B Artzy Ornament Tangle dies and die cut it out. I love the matching dies to this set. They even cut the little hole for the ornament hanger which is so cool.

I used some dimensional foam and added it to the back of my circle ornament so that I could layer it on top of the other two. Once it was in place, I used some silver thread and looped it through the ornament hanger and adhered it to the back of my card front using some score tape.

At this point, I realized I’d made a slight mistake when I stamped my ornaments onto my cardstock. I had accidently stamped the long skinny ornament upside down so that the hanger loop was at the bottom. I try not to start projects over, unless I’ve made a mistake that can’t be covered or corrected. In this case, I wasn’t sure that it would be noticeable but decided to cover up my mistake anyway.

To do that, I stamped the beautiful, script Merry Christmas sentiment that comes with the Ornament Tangle stamp set onto some white cardstock with some Versamark and heat embossed it with some silver embossing powder.  I was then able to layer that sentiment strip across the bottom of that ornament to cover up my mistake.

To finish my card I added some sequins and adhered the card panel to a white A2 size top folding card base.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s card and are inspired to try out some metallic water coloring on dark cardstock. These ornaments would look stunning against any dark cardstock with the water colors.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Hope you have a wonderful day!

 

Hugs

Tonya