Embossed Trees for Christmas

Hello my friends!  Today's card is an idea that I had as soon as I saw the new Painted Trees Embossing Folder.  Surprisingly, it was very quick and easy to make.  And it turned out pretty much the way I envisioned it.  That sure doesn't happen too often!  I really like the looks of it finished, but I still want to try the same idea with several different green tones.  That might necessitate changing the card base color to match.  So, I might end up with an entirely different looking card.  But that's for another day and another post (but only if it works out ok).

For this card, I started with the Basic White cardstock.  It measures 5 1/4" x 4".  This was embossed with the Painted Trees Embossing Folder.  This folder is found in the September - December Mini Catalog.  It's shown as part of a suite of products, but it does just great standing on its own.

For the color on the trees, I used a Water Painter and Soft Seafoam ink refill first.  The color is just dabbed on the raised tree images, not painted solidly.  This already gave me a couple different green tones depending on the concentration of the ink.

The greens were not dark enough yet, so Garden Green ink was added to them.  Again, I was just dabbing on the color with the Water Painter, so the colors are very mottled with different depths of color.

Next, to add a little color into the sky area, I used a Pool Party Dark Blending Pen to flick colorful speckles on the card.  In the pictures you can see them better on the left side of the card.  The speckles are quite a light color but add just enough color, so the sky doesn't look too stark.

The sentiment is from the Greetings of the Season which is one of the Online Exclusive items available now.  It's stamped with Real Red ink to give it a pop of contrasting color on the card.

Next a Real Red card base was cut that measured 8 1/2" x 5 1/2".  It's scored at 4" and folded in half.  This is all I planned to do with the card.  But a piece of Silver Foil was out on my desk.  I just slid it between the two layers and wow.  This was such a lovely addition I had to use it.   A piece of Silver Foil was cut to measure 5 3/8" x 4 1/8".  This was just the perfect tiny frame peeking out between the layers!  Before attaching the layers together, I die-cut a rectangle from the center because I couldn't bear to waste all that lovely silver.  So now I have a perfect layer for another card.  

The embossed layer was attached to the silver layer using "green glue" to hold.  Then the glue was used again to attach the silver to the folded red card.  The sparkly embellishments used here are my favorite standby - the Rhinestone Basic Jewels.  This time I sprinkled five of them throughout the sky area to represent stars or maybe snowflakes.

Like I said earlier, this is a quick and easy card to make.  The embossing folder really does the work of defining the trees for you.  Of course, you can use other colors to suit your tastes.  But I'm really happy with this first foray of using the Painted Trees Embossing Folder.  Hope you try this idea out.  I'd love to hear what colors you used and what you thought about the technique.

Happy stamping and creating,

Sharon