Blended Summer Tree Christmas Card

 

So I decided to make another blended tree christmas card to go with my engineering tree christmas card. This time I wanted to use little stamp images that matched a summer theme. The reason being that I live in New Zealand and we have christmas in summer. To add motivation to the cause I decided to also try and complete the card fast enough so I could enter this month's CAS christmas card challenge, a link to which you can find below...

https://caschristmascardchallenge.blogspot.com/2020/11/cas-christmas-november-2020-challenge.html

To make sure I tied into this month's challenge, I went with a blue blended/ombre background for the tree. Unfortunately, I did make a mistake with my stamping so to cover it up I added another piece of card on top of the original card front. It only adds one layer so hopefully still within rules of the challenge to have minimal layers; anyway, happy to have another card finished and sharing this design.

If you want to see a video on how I make these kinds of cards click the link below for the video below:

https://youtu.be/Sjdd-1c5JW4

 

Just like my previous blended engineering tree christmas card, I used a triangle cut out to mask around which makes the 'tree' shape on the card front. My card front is an A6 notecard and I tape it down to my stamping platform.

I use Altenew crisp dye inks in, sea glass, ocean waves and dusk to blend a blue ombre background within the triangle tree using my blending brushes.

Blue ombre blended background

I then gather all my summer themed stamp sets and select the small image stamps and arrange as many as I can fit onto/within the masked triangle. After this I close the door on my stamping platform to grab the stamps.

Arranging all the little summer themed stamps inside triangle tree

I used gina k designs amalgam ink in jet black to ink and stamp the images onto the card front. I ink and stamp a couple of times to make sure I get a good stamped images.

Then I clean my stamps using a baby wipe. I take the small heart stamp and using an acrylic block along with the same black ink as before, I ink and stamp the small image multiple times in various orientations to fill in the gaps in the triangle tree.

Stamped images

Using an acrylic block I once again inked and stamped  a 'merry christmas' sentiment stamp  below the triangle tree image to portray a stump of the tree.

Unfortunately, I didn't stamp it very well and it looked horrible. So, to cover it up I took another piece of A6 sized cardstock, cut out the triangle and overlaid it on top of the card front hide the poor stamping.

I then stamped the 'merry christmas' sentiment stamp using StazOn saddle brown ink onto this piece of cardstock using my stamping platform. I also, grabbed a black sharpie marker and colored in the inner edge of the triangle frame to give it a bit of definition.

 

Frame overlay with stamped sentiment and colored frame

Next step was I used double-sided tape to adhere this new frame to the card front, making sure to frame lined up with the triangle tree shape. Then trimmed off any excess.

As usual, I then adhere the card front to a card base this time a silver card base.

Frustratingly, I realised using a sharpie to color the edge of the frame was not a good idea because the ink bled and made the framing look untidy. To fix this I grabbed a black gel pen and a ruler and drew  black lines along the edge of the frame over the top of the bleeding ink. 

Unfortunately, I already sent the card by the time I got around to typing up posting this blog post so I don't have a photo of the final 'tidied up' card, just a photo of before I fixed it but after the card front was adhered to the card base.

Finished card (before I fixed the bleeding ink)

I enjoyed making this card and I like the final design better than the previous versions. I also like that I can change the theme of the little stamps I use to fill the tree triangle to suit a certain genre or interests of the person I intend to send it to.

Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope you found something useful or interesting.

Happy crafting!

Mel Crafting