July Christmas card: Winter cardinal

I've been having fun making watercolor washes for card backgrounds lately, so I decided to pull out my paints for my July Christmas card design. But this time I used them for the focal images instead of the background.

Supplies:
Paper: Whisper White note cards and envelopes, gold foil sheets (Stampin' Up!); woodgrain embossed card stock (Essentials by Ellen); Somerset Velvet watercolor paper (Marco's Paper)
Ink: Gansai Tambi waterolor paints - 30 (Cadmium Red), 35 (Carmine), 55 (Viridian), 58 (Sap Green Deep), 46 (Burnt Sienna), 47 (Raw Umber Deep) (Kuretake)
Accessories: Woodland Basics dies (WPlus9 Design Studio), gold sequins (The Makery), Bitty Banner punch (Stampin' Up!), Art Glitter Glue (Art Institute Glitter), foam tape (3M), 1/8" Scor-Tape (Scor-Pal)

I created three washes on watercolor paper -- red, brown, and green -- mixing together two colors for each wash. While that was drying, I prepped the card bases. I used Whisper White note cards and envelopes and adhered a 3-1/2" x 5" piece of white woodgrain embossed card stock to the front of each card. (I just bought a pack of this card stock during a recent sale at the Ellen Hutson site. It's so beautiful, and it was perfect for this card design.)

Once the watercolor paints were dry, I started die cutting the pieces. Each card uses one bird, one pinecone, two small branches, and two large branches. When I was removing the pinecone shapes from the dies, some of the inner pieces fell out. Instead of removing the rest of the pieces, I decided to leave them as is, and I like the effect; each one is a little different.

I adhered the branches and pinecone near the middle of each card front with liquid glue, and then I used foam tape to attach the cardinals. I wanted to keep the embellishment simple but still bring in a little glitz, so I added a little banner punched from gold foil and three gold sequins.

Christmas is exactly five months away. (Where does the time go?) I'm glad I've got a good chunk of my cards done! Thanks for stopping by!