{BYSHC} Sketch Challenge 62 ~ Joy of the Season ~ Gina K. Designs

Hello there crafty friend!

I'm back with one last card for the {BYSHC} Sketch Challenge 62 hosted in the Build Your Stash Holiday Cardmakers Facebook group! Celebrating Blue Christmas with this one! My mom loved that song by Elvis Presley. She played it all the time! So naturally, I love it because it reminds me of her.

Anywho, I had a lot of fun making this card! I started by heat embossing the beautiful trees on white card stock with white pigment ink and white embossing powder. I wanted to be sure the trees would stay a nice, bright white. The beautiful trees and deer are from one of my favorite Gina K. Designs stamp sets, a collaboration with Simon Says Stamp for STAMPtember back in 2018 called Joy of the Season. Good news though... the trees are available in the Tall Pine stamp set. I don't see the same deer on the website but there's a pretty deer silhouette in the Holiday Silhouettes stamp set and a similar one in the Season's Greetings stamp set.

Once my trees had cooled off, I started ink smooshing with Salvaged Patina, Chipped Sapphire and Black Soot Distress Inks. It's not super easy to ink smoosh with heat embossed images. The raised images tend to keep the paper from reaching the ink pools, so I do tend to do more ink and a bit more water so the pool of ink is a little deeper. Once I was happy with the ink smooshing, I started blending with the inks until I was happy with the background. Lastly, I spattered the background with white acrylic paint that I thinned with a spritz of water. And then I ended up trimming the background way down to fit the sketch. That actually hurt after all that work on the background. But I made another background and adhered it to a black A2 card base. I trimmed the tree panel into three segments following the design of the sketch and adhered it to a black mat. I popped it up on the card base with foam tape.

I heat embossed the sentiment from the Christmas Cheer stamp set on black card stock again with white pigment ink and white embossing powder. I die cut it using the coordinating Christmas Cheer die set, and then I popped it up on the card with foam tape. I stamped the pretty deer using the three distress inks. I started with the lightest, Salvaged Patina, and worked my way down with the Chipped Sapphire and then Black Soot inks. Hint: to keep from getting harsh lines between your inks use a blending brush along the edge of the ink on your stamp. It's a wonderful way to stamp silhouette stamps!

Here's a look at {BYSHC} Sketch Challenge 62 for the month of October. Today is the last day to enter the challenge! If you're interested in seeing a bit more inspiration for this sketch, check out the amazing inspiration from the design team over on the {BYSH} Cardmakers blog! I'm always blown away by the creations from the DT... they are amazingly talented cardmakers!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Inky hugs,

Crystal