Christmassy Makes with Papermill card

Hello, another week has gone by so fast, and the weather is cold and grey today.  What happened to that promised heatwave?  Actually I'm not much of a sun lover, so the cooler days do suit me, but not so good for taking pics.

This week 'Forest Green' 160gsm is on Offer at Papermill Direct, where you can snap up a small (approx 140 sheets) A4 box for just £7-36. It's always worth taking an extra look at the Special Offers section as there is often some other goodies to tempt you too.

So what have I been up to this week?  Well I made a Tutorial for a Halloween card, which you can find over on the papermill blog, and I also made a couple of Christmas Cards to share with you :)  As always the materials lists and links are at the end of the post.

First up I thought I would try out a new stamp I bought at a papercraft show recently, it's the dinky little snowman stamp, which I watercoloured by taking a slightly wet brush to lift the colour from the tips of the water-colour pencils.  The snowman was stamped onto supersmooth white card which is especially fabulous for stamping onto and I found it easy to water-colour onto too.  I used Mocha Brown card to create my card base and die cut a snowflake frame and 'Merry Christmas' sentiment from white pearlised, as I liked the added little sparkle effect.  I embossed the Sky Blue card with a snowflake design embossing folder and this may seem strange but afterwards i ran it through the big shot with the embossing mat just to flatten the design a little, as I wanted a more subtle emboss.  I matted and layered the watercoloured snowman onto die cut circles and attached with 3D foam pads to give some height. A few faux pearls in different sizes to finish off the snowflakes.

Next design is a festive Tree shaped card.  I cut the card base from Forest Green card (the standard 240gsm).  I stamped randomly all over with 2 different swirl stamps using a gilding glue and then applied gilding flakes.  I also randomly stamped a 3 small circles stamp in Cosmic Copper ink and a sentiment of 'Ohhh Christmas Tree' was stamped in Cosmic Copper onto Buff card. The sentiment was 3D assembled on top of a  cream & gold ribbon finished with a little bow on the top. 

I used Buff card for the 'pot' part of the tree, eagle eyed amongst you will recognise it as the Leather version of the Buff (which was a past special offer), but any card or colour would work. 

I quite like the look of the gilded tree, the swirls remind me of tinsel and the circles of baubles.  What do you think?  As always really happy to answer any questions and love reading your comments.

Materials Lists:
Mocha Brown card - papermill direct
Sky Blue card - papermill direct
White Pearlised card - papermill direct
Super Smooth White card - papermill direct
Snowman Dinky Stamp - IndigoBlu
Snowflakes Framelits Die set - Sizzix
Circle Framelits Die set - Sizzix
Merry Christmas Sentiment
Watercolour pencils
faux pearls
Forest Green card - papermill direct
Buff card - papermill direct
Gilding Glue and Gilding flakes - IndigoBlu
Sentiment Stamp
Cosmic Copper Brilliance Inkpad
Cream & Gold ribbon

if you have a moment, please do pop over and check out the other papermill teamies blogs and see what they got up to this week:
Barbara
Lisa
Ruth
Sylvia
Sandie
Sharon