January Christmas card: Winter pine boughs

I'm taking a little break from valentines to share my Christmas card design for January. I've ordered a few new holiday stamp sets recently -- one of the benefits of making Christmas cards all year long! -- so I was excited to get a chance to play with them.

Supplies:
Stamps: Winter Blessings (Unity Stamp Company)
Paper: Crumb Cake card stock (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: Shaded Spruce (Stampin' Up!), VersaFine Clair Pinecone (Tsukineko)
Accessories: White heavy gesso (Art Basics), Timeless Label punch (Stampin' Up!), green organdy ribbon (Stampin' Up!), foam tape (3M)

I love the detail in these images, so I kept the card design very simple. I stamped the pine boughs and pinecones on Crumb Cake card stock using (appropriately!) Shaded Spruce and Pinecone inks. Then to add the look of snow, I diluted some white gesso and splattered it across the card. I discovered that because the gesso is water-based, it reacted with the green ink, which is a dye ink. So I tried to keep the "snow" on the unstamped parts of the card or on the pinecones (the brown ink is a hybrid ink and not affected by the water).

I stamped the sentiment on Crumb Cake card stock and punched it with a label punch. I added some of the gesso around the punched label; I purposely made it look a little messy so it would look like snow collecting around the edges. I attached the sentiment to the card using foam tape, with a little piece of dark green organdy ribbon behind it to help it stand out.

I added a Christmas sentiment inside the card, but without that, this card design would be great for a general winter-themed card. And now my first six Christmas cards are done!

Thanks for stopping by!