Dramatic Black, Red, and Gold for Christmas!

This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!

Hi friends! I am back with another project using one of my new holiday illustrations for Simon Says Stamp: Festive Bouquets. I was on a roll with the vibrant red lilies when I was coloring a couple of weeks ago; I used OLO markers to create this vivid bouquet for THIS post, but for today’s project, I used Distress Inks to watercolor these bold blooms. Let’s get started with the details!

To start, I heat embossed the lily bouquet from the Festive Bouquets set onto some Fabriano Artistico Cold Press watercolor paper using gold embossing powder. Next, I tapped Barn Door, Aged Mahogany, and Forest Moss Distress Inks onto my palette and picked up the color with my damp paintbrush to add some vibrant watercolor! Once I’d finished watercoloring the images, I tapped Black Soot ink on my palette and did a wash around the edge of the embossed image. I knew that I wanted a black background behind the die cut watercolored image, and adding the black around the edges helps keep the color palette cohesive throughout the project even after die cutting.

After I had finished my watercoloring, I turned to the card base. The lily bouquet in the Festive Bouquets set is quite generously-sized, making it perfect for use with larger card sizes. I trimmed down a panel of Rainbow Splash black to A7 size, then masked around the edges using Satin Masking Tape. I placed the Snow Pattern stencil over the masked area, keeping it in place with a few pieces of washi tape, then spritzed Tim Holtz Mica Spray in Tart Cranberry and Tarnished Brass over the top of the stencil. These beautiful Mica Sprays are opaque enough that they add a subtle shimmer and color to even black cardstock. (Bonus: you can get the super cute Walter the penguin die as a free gift with purchase if you purchase $25 of Tim Holtz product, which includes these fabulous Mica Sprays!)

Once my stenciled pattern had dried and I’d removed the masking tape around the edges, I die cut the A7 Thin Frames dies from Matte Gold Metallic foil cardstock. I always keep my Thin Frames dies wired together, rather than snipping them apart, so that I can create a variety of widths of frames with just one pass through my die cutting machine! I found a frame to cover the edges of the stenciled area and adhered it, then added a slightly larger thinner frame to nest around the outer edge of my stenciled frame. I die cut some Airy Pine Needles using gold glitter cardstock, then added the flowers and pine needles on the top corner of my card using foam adhesive. I added some gold embossed and die cut sentiments from Festive Bouquets using some more foam adhesive, finishing everything off with some matte gold pearl embellishments.

Well, that’s all for my project today! Can you believe that DieCember starts tonight at midnight? I’m so excited to share all of the projects I’ve been creating lately! Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!