Watercooler Wednesday Challenge #133 - Penny's "All About Christmas" Challenge

I love our "All About Christmas" challenges.   They offer me a perfect opportunity to build up my stash of Christmas cards and, best of all, let me play with some of the wonderful new products from our Holiday Catalogue.  This week's enthusiastic hostess is Penny Hanuszak.

I really saw some wonderful possibilities with the new Night In Bethlehem bundle.  One of those possibilities was to marry it up with the new background stamp from the Annual Catalogue, Sheet Music.

What I envisioned was a three colour background in that music as well as sponged over with colour.  Unfortunately sponging over the dye-based ink in my chosen colours with the same colours of dye-based ink left me with barely a shadow of any sort of image.  And so I tried an experiment.  I inked up the Sheet Music stamp using Oxide inks with Faded Denim at the top, Peeled Paint in the centre, and Vintage Photo at the bottom.  I liked the stamped image and thought the colours were close to my Stampin' Up! colours.  Oxide inks are permanent when fully dried but before I let them dry, I gave the stamped piece a soft spray of water and then let it dry.

If you look closely, the image of the sheet music has some splatters and runny bits.  I thought that added to the vintage look I was after.  I used Marina Mist to sponge the top area, Pear Pizzazz to sponge the middle area and Soft Suede to sponge the bottom area.  Since the Oxide ink has both dye and pigment inks, the image stayed visible enough after some very enthusiastic sponging.

I stamped the first town silhouette using Crumb Cake since I wanted it to look faded.  The town silhouette in the foreground was stamped using Early Espresso to give it a real solid look.  Once I knew the sponged ink was fully dry, I used my embossing buddy on the card and stamped the star and the last line of one of the sentiments from the Night in Bethlehem set using Versamark.  After heat embossing them with Gold Embossing Powder, I turned to the figures of Mary, Joseph and the donkey.  I stamped those using Basic Black and then cut them using the appropriate framelit.  Since I didn't want the stark white against my card, I sponged some Soft Suede around the edges of the figures before attached the piece using the small Dimensionals.

I hope you'll check out the cards created by the Watercooler Artists at our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.

I've also added my card to the Jingle Belles Challenge since it fits this fortnight's prompt for a Vintage Look.

And I've also added my card to the Merry Monday Christmas Challenge for their Christmas in July Summer Link-Up.

Last but definitely not least, I've added my card to the Addicted to Stamps and More #256--Anything Goes Challenge.