Christmas: Trimming the tree

This card was created on 8th November; day 8 of The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge.

The latest challenge from The East Wind is a little different; rather than specifying a particular technique or element to incorporate, this time the challenge is to create a project based on a memory in honour of Alzheimer’s Awareness month in the US.

I wanted to use the “Trimming the tree” freebie from this month’s newsletter, so that got me thinking back to Christmases when I was growing up… Christmas was never a huge event in our house, but I do remember us having a real tree and the box of tinsel and glass ornaments that we decorated it with. So my card is a throwback to those times with the 70s style wallpaper and sculpted carpet…

How:

I printed out Aurora and her box and coloured her with Copic markers. I added a touch of shine with a little Wink of Stella on the hat and some glossy accents on a couple of the decorations. The box originally had some tinsel hanging down below it, but I was forced into performing a bit of card surgery when my Wink of Stella glooped a massive splodge of sparkly stuff over it 😦

The background was created using two different stencils for the wallpaper and carpet and two colours of Distress ink for each. The sentiment was stamped in Versamark and then heat embossed in a sparkly embossing powder that photographs terribly. Golden paper chains were created from some border stickers.

The tree was die cut and backed with a hand-cut piece of pearlised paper. I cut the paper to cover all the enclosed holes in the die cut; if I had checked the exact positioning of the tree and Aurora on the card, I would have extended it to cover the bottom (open) gap as well, but I didn’t notice how obvious the space was until I had it assembled. The pot for the tree was cut from a scrap of card and coloured with Distress ink.

I added the tree to the card using thin foam tape and put thicker tape behind Aurora. The bottom of the card was looking a little bare, so I picked another border sticker to finish it off.

Challenges:

The East Wind – #66 Thanks for the Memories

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Lawn Fawn – joy to the woods (sentiment)
• digital stamps:
  The East Wind – Aurora trimming the tree
• dies:
  Tim Holtz – festive scribbles
• stencils:
  Tim Holtz – tiles
  Tim Holtz – flourish
• inks:
  Versamark
• embossing powder:
  Wow! – pearl gold sparkle
• Distress ink pads:
  wallpaper – tea dye, pumice stones
  carpet – weathered wood, iced spruce
• Copic markers:
  skin – E00, E51, E21, E70
  lips – E93, E95
  eyes – B91, B63, B66
  hair – E15, E17, E18, E07
  clothes – R27, R29, R59
  hat trim – W00, W1, W3
  leggings – W4, W6, W8
  box – E42, E43, E44
  decorations – B63, B66, C00, C1, C3, Y11, Y38, Y28, E25
• embellishments:
  Anita’s outline stickers – assorted borders – gold
• paper and card:
  Neenah solar white
  Neenah desert storm
  Hunkydory adorable scorable – evergreen
  Paperchase – A6 cropping block – metallic
  Hunkydory adorable scorable