Into the Woods Tim Holtz Stamped Christmas Cards

Happy Monday friends!  I hope you enjoyed a long holiday weekend.  I'm thrilled to be joining the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this month as a guest designer. This week's featured brand is Brutus Monroe.

I hope you'll hop on over and see what the design team has created for this week's challenge, Let's Sparkle.  I was in the mood for some stamping!  I chose to focus on this year's new Tim Holtz Into the Woods stamp set.  I wanted to create an icy winter wonderland scene on a mailable pair of cards.

I started by dipping long skinny watercolor panels in both Evergreen Bough Distress Ink and Tumbled Glass Distress Oxide, then splashing the leftover inks on the panels and stamping the snow from the set repeatedly. 

I stamped the woodland critters in Frayed Burlap Distress Ink with my Stamp Platform repeatedly until the color was dense.  Then I clear embossed them while the ink was wet.  Next, I embossed the trees in white.  I stamped more trees in Evergreen Bough and spritzed them heavily with water before stamping, then blotted them as soon as I stamped them for a very washed out effect.  I stamped the sentiment from Tim's Christmastime stamp set and embossed in Ranger Gold Tinsel for a bit of sparkle.

I inked some paper to coordinate and cut my foliage from Tim's Large Funky Festive die set.  I layered with a button and string.  I added some of Tim's new Distress Mica Flakes on the flowers and bottom of the card.  Finally, I embossed the edges of the panel in Ranger's Mint Chip Speckle embossing enamel.  This added subtle glitter and the embossing helped tie in with the white embossed trees.

I overstamped the edges of the panel with the Stripes and Holiday Words stamp set in Frayed Burlap.

The finished cards are 8 1/2 x 4 1/4".  The stamped panels were mounted onto Metallic Kraft core.  I hope these cards have given you a few ideas on adding subtle sparkle to your Christmas cards and you will play along in our Let's Sparkle challenge for a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to the Simon Says Stamp shop.

Visit Simon Says Stamp today for all of your Christmas card crafting needs!