A Beautiful Season with a Young Vermillion

It would've been rude not to have finished the week with a Young Vermillion card wouldn't it?! Today I've combined it with the bird from Beautiful Season to make a pair of robins for a vintage/traditional card as requested by the ladies at Make My Monday. Come and see:

I loved making this card which I feel is quite over-the-top and Christmassy! I started by stamping the scene onto a piece of watercolour paper. The stamps were coloured directly with markers, avoiding the markings around the eyes of the birds, then stamped - the Young Vermillion first and then the bird and holly from Beautiful Season to the left and slightly above it (the bird is smaller on that stamp, so it now looks as if it's perched on a branch behind the first). Then it was ready for a little work with the aquapainter!

Here's a close up of the water colouring. Because I'd coloured the stamp with the relevant colours already I only needed to pull some of the colour in from the outlines - except in the case of the birds which I'd coloured brown. I added a very little red to their breasts and then finished them off with a Crumb Cake marker when they were dry and added black eyes. I didn't touch the berries with the aquapainter because I wanted those to be very defined, so I coloured those with a Real Red marker when the panel was dry too. The sky got a wash of Bashful Blue using the larger aquapainter in the set.

When the panel was completely dry, it was swiped round the edges with versamark ink and embossed with gold embossing powder before this lovely sentiment was added using a stamp-a-majig. To coordinate with the gold, I used the wonderful - and I mean WONDERFUL!!! - brushed gold card stock. My photographs don't do it justice but what a very classy card base this makes and it's just perfect for Christmas.

I  stamped an extra sprig of holly, cut it out with my sharp paper snips and popped it up on dimensionals to give a bit of depth to the card. The berries were dotted with a versamark pen and embossed in gold too - it's quite hard to see in the photo but it adds a lovely glitter in real life.

I'm going to put my name forward for a guest designer slot on Make My Monday with this card - so fingers crossed!

Supplies needed for these cards:

Stamps: Young Vermillion, Beautiful Season

Ink: Bashful Blue, Crumb Cake, versamark, markers in Early Espresso, Old Olive, Real Red, 

Card stock: Early Espresso, Brushed Gold, watercolour paper, scrap of Naturals Ivory

Other: Aquapainters, Real Red 1/8" taffeta ribbon, Scallop border punch, paper snips, stamp-a-majig

I'd be delighted to order any of these supplies for you and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I am committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to help and advise. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593. 

I made a gorgeous lime pie for pudding last night. (It's very easy - you make a biscuit crumb base then pile on a filling made with mascarpone whisked up with freshly squeezed lime juice and zest with a bit of icing sugar to sweeten it.) "What d'you think of this then?" I asked proudly as I brought it to the table. My youngest son looked at it with interest. "It looks like the kind of pie you throw it in someone's face!" he said.

Have a great weekend and I shall see you very soon.

Hugs,