Intimidated By A Santa Stamp

I am truly loving this card. 

First, I was a bit intimidated by this stamped image. As you can see from the pictures below the Image is like a collage. I really had no clue what to do with it. That's probably the reason why it has been in a folder for the last two years.  This stamped Santa image was given to me about two years ago by my mom. I believe it is from a Stampin' Up stamp.

Thanks to one of the most recent challenges on Simon Says Stamp Blog, I pushed myself to come out of my comfort zone. The challenge that they are hosting which inspired me to finally use this Santa image is called About A Face.  

Two unlatch myself from the intimidation, I told myself to just take baby steps.

Because I still had a gray piece of paper on the craft table from the wedding card in my last post, I immediately knew that this card was going to be made using a nontraditional Christmas color. That just happens to be a requirement for a challenge at Christmas Cards All Year Round Blog. 

Now 2 steps were taken. 

Baby steps 1 & 2 - The stamped image and the paper. 

The image itself is pretty large. The image would take up the whole card front unless it was altered.

Baby step 3 - tear away excess paper around the image.

 

A very helpful tip for when you want to tear the paper in just the right place is to trace where you want to tear with a Q-tip soaked with water. Notice the grayish outline around the image. That is where the paper is wet.

After the water has a chance to soak into the paper you can easily tear away your unwanted edges.

Baby step 4 - add a touch of color - ok that's simple,  so I dipped the q-tips directly onto the ink pads and lightly applied color to the areas that I desired.

Baby step 5 - I knew I wanted something coming out from under the image. Looking through my pile of scraps I found a small piece of tan paper. To complement the image I also teared the paper and inked the edges. You can see that in the photo above on the right side.

Baby step 6 - embellish, embellish, and embellish!

6A -  I always admire cards with lace. You can see the top right corner has a small piece of lace that was rubbed with brown ink. The lace was tucked under the image and wrapped over the top of it, then secured with hot glue.

6B - Need a greeting message. The greeting strip that reads "enjoy" was also in the stash of images that hasn't been touched for two years! That was printed out using the Design Runner. To make it look a little aged this word strip was also rubbed with a little brown ink.

6C - The card needs more embellishments on the bottom. Ooo, a piece of burlap was sitting on the craft table along with a white foam snowflake, perfect! Red ink was rubbed onto the burlap and brown on the snowflake. 

The center of the snowflake was begging for a special touch. I didn't want anything to shiny so rhinestones and sequins were out. Buttons or brads were my other options. The brad won; do you know why? It was closer to me, lol

6D- The greeting on top saying "enjoy" started to bother me as this Santa didn't look very happy. While searching for another greeting, I found this rubber "Merry Christmas" . To me, adding that to the card toned down the "enjoy" on top. 

After completing each baby step I would ask myself - "what do you want to see on the card?"

After answering the question, make it happen, step by step. 

Slowly you will see a masterpiece start to form!