Xmas card: Peace Santa

What:

A peace-loving Santa for the December instalment of Gerda Steiner’s progressive challenge.

The idea:

Taking inspiration from the banner that Santa is holding, I wanted to create an aperture for the banner to be hung across.

How:

Colouring Santa was the most straightforward part of making this card. Fussy cutting him was pretty simple too, apart from the moment where I remembered that I had planned to leave the card intact and use a scalpel to cut just the aperture around him. Ah well, plans can change and I am nothing if not adaptable.

I pierced holes in and around the PEACE letter cards and threaded gold embroidery silk through, leaving a reasonable length at either end to drape down the card. A couple of the holes were quite close together and I accidentally split the card between them and the thread pulled through. I fixed the problem by using a pin to temporarily bridge the gap and then putting some multi medium matte on the back to stop the thread from slipping again.

The supporting panel was made by wetting a piece of watercolour paper and spritzing it with teal Color Bloom mist. I dried it with my heat gun and then spattered a few drops of gold mist over it. When it was dry, I die cut the window from it and pierced a couple of holes and threaded the banner string through them.

I made a card base from white card and found a piece of paper to go behind the aperture. That sounds so simple but it took me longer to find something that worked (I’d forgotten I had the foiled card pad) than it would have done to make some glitter paper (my first idea for the background)…

Then I put some foam tape on the back of Santa and the watercolour panel. Quite a lot of foam tape. A single layer around the edges of the panel, a single layer on Santa’s boots and the top of his hat, and a double layer on the rest of him.

I attached Santa to the edges of the aperture by his hat and boots first, then removed the backing on the rest of the tape and carefully lined up the panel on the card base.

To finish it off, I glued the ends of the threads to the card and gave Santa’s fur trim a coat of Wink of Stella for a bit of sparkle.

Lessons Learned:

Think twice before cutting (or doing anything on autopilot): you might have been going to do something different this time…

It can be easier to use a needle threader to pull embroidery silk through small holes in card than to try to sew it with a needle.

Challenges:

Gerda Steiner progressive monthly challenge – December

Supplies:

• digital stamps:
  Gerda Steiner – Santa peace
• dies:
  Spellbinders – wonky rectangles
• colour:
  Prima – color bloom mist – gold foil
  Prima – color bloom mist – deep teal
• Copic markers:
  santa suit – R27, RV29, R39
  suit trim – C00, C0, C1, C2
  buckle – Y26, Y17, Y28
  belt/gloves/shoes – W4, W6, W8
  beard – W00, W0, W1, W2, W3
  cards – T0, T1, T2
  letters – FYG2, YG07, YG05
• embellishments:
  gold embroidery thread
  Wink of Stella – clear
• paper and card:
  Neenah – solar white
  Papermill Direct – super smooth – white
  WH Smith – watercolour paper – 300gsm
  DCWV – paper pad – foil cardstock – brights
• miscellaneous:
  loads of foam tape!