Hello friends!! Welcome and happy Friday! Laurie here to share a fun, tropical themed Christmas card. What’s great about this card is that it combines an actual winter themed stamp set with a non-winter stamp set!
When looking through my beautiful stash of P&M stamps and dies, I came across the Deck the Palms stamp set. This was from last year and the palm tree image is one of my favourites. I also came across the Gull Friend stamp set which has the cutest beach house image. I thought to myself, why not combine the two??!! In fact, the scale of these two images is on point to be combined!
I started by creating a beach background using Distress Inks. I hadn’t originally planned on creating a square card so I started inking up a standard sized card front. To create an organic looking sandy beach, I tore off a strip of plain copy paper to create a mask. You could use a hill die but I love the imperfect look of this.
I used Antique Linen for the sand. I used the other portion of the “mask” to place over the sand while inking up the “ocean”. I used, of course, Salty Ocean Distress Ink for this. And for the sky portion, I used the Clouds Stencil to create some light blue clouds using Broken China Distress Ink.
After colouring my images up with alcohol markers, I fussy cut each one, right up against the stamped line. I wanted to alter the palm trees so the co-ordinating dies would not have worked.
Although very cute, I didn’t want the stockings on this card. This is where I decided to make a square card. I used the second largest of the Reverse Scallop Square dies and cut directly into my ink panel. This created continuity from the background to the frame. I also cut a piece of craft foam with the same die to create some dimension.
I adhered the frame onto a 4X4 kraft card base then nestled the inner portion inside. I used the same craft foam behind my coloured images so they were the same level as the frame. I added some sparkle pen and Nuvo Crystal Glaze to the lights on the trees as well as the bunting on the beach house.
The sentiment comes from the Deck the Palms set and was stamped directly onto the card front.
I love the way these two stamp sets work together perfectly! I also wish I was celebrating Christmas there on the beach! Thanks so much for stopping by this morning!! Have a fabulous weekend!
Laurie