June Christmas cards: Nature sings

Earlier this month I was thinking about what to do for my June Christmas cards. I asked my sister for a suggestion, and she said “purple.” It wasn’t much to go on, but I liked the idea because I haven’t made any purple holiday cards yet this year. So I went with it, and decided to combine the themes of nature and music with purple. Here are my finished cards:

I made a total of ten cards with this design. Well, technically I suppose it’s eight cards of this design and two with slight modifications. If you look carefully at the photo, you might notice two cards that are just a tiny bit different. Here they are by themselves:

The card on the left was the first prototype. I liked the way it looked, but I really wanted to add the sentiment “Let heaven and nature sing.” Unfortunately, I only have that saying on one stamp (how?!?), and it wasn’t the right shape to fit anywhere on that layout. So instead I held my breath and hand wrote it around the edges of the focal layer. The result was okay, but I didn’t really want to hand write on all the cards (too much pressure). I decided to make a new prototype with all the same elements but in a portrait orientation instead. Then I added the sentiment on a small tag in the lower right corner. It was okay, but I didn’t love it. Back to the drawing board. And with a couple of tweaks — and an overnight break — I finally had a layout I was really happy with.

First off, I moved down the sheet music just a little. That gave me enough room to stamp the sentiment in the upper left corner of the card base. The second change was to use a lighter shade of purple for the card base so you can actually see the stamped sentiment.Yay! And I love the results.

Here are a few more details: The sheet music is vintage choir music I got when a church was clearing out some old things. I splattered the card bases with gold watercolor. I colored the birds with alcohol makers and blended Toffee ink (Taylored Expressions) along the scalloped edges to age that layer a little bit.

I think these might be my favorite Christmas cards so far this year. Thanks for stopping by!