Polar Bear Christmas Cards

 Finished the cards that were on my desk, and I'm quite pleased with how they turned out, as I hadn't really got a plan in mind when I started.
 I found the sheets of stamped images in a box of Christmas Papers whilst tidying, and I must have stamped them up a few years ago. Quite a few years ago, to be honest. More than I can clearly remember, anyway.
 Chances are the stamp set is long discontinued, but it was a set of clear stamps from Woodware.

A lot of fairly small stamps, the image of the two polar bears I used is more or less 2" square, I extended it either side, using the snowballs image one side, and the snowy hillock the other. I added the little group of stars, bottom right of the set, a few times, then the main star above them.  It had been stamped in dark blue and heat embossed with clear powder. And that was as far as I'd got. I also knew that if I put them back in the box, they'd lie there for another few years, till I investigated the contents again, so decided to use them up.
I'd stamped 8 images to an A4 sheet, and I had 4 sheets.
Having found card blanks they'd fit on,I trimmed them all down to size, roughly 3 3/4" square. This does vary a tad, as it depended how high above the bears I'd stamped the star.



 I'm not a confident colourer at all, so decided I'd try the minimalist look- drawing a line around inside the image with ink, then dragging it in with a wet paintbrush.
 I used Distress Ink Tumbled Glass for this step.

Worked out better than I expected, and it seems a fairly easy way to add some colour.

 Now of course the sky area looked too stark, being white, so I needed to add some colour here too.
 I decided to try out just brushing on some ink with one of the super soft paintbrushes I'd bought from The Works.







I used Faded Jeans Distress Ink to start with , then added some Chipped Sapphire along the top edge and in the corners, just to give the sky some depth.

All finished, and you know when something comes out better than you expected?

Next touch was something I saw at Happy Stampers, on the Chloes Creative Cards stand.
 She had used a chisel tip glue pen to go around the outside edge of card panels, then sprinkled with Ultra Fine Glitter.
 I happened to have a Zig Chisel tip Glue Pen, so gave it a try.

I sprinkled mine with Glamour Dust. I wasn't sure how the Distress Ink might react to the glue, but it was fine. No colour spread at all.

Not sure how well it shows up, but there is a nice sparkle to them. Actually, if you click on the image to enlarge, you can see it quite well.

Now I needed a greeting, and this was a search for one the right size!
 In the end, it was one from Clevercut/Stamps Away, by Ali Reeve. I'd bought this one, which I'm pretty sure was a set of greetings stamps, including seasons Greetings,Congratulations and a couple of Birthday Sentiments, when we visited Happy Stampers in May.
 I used a slightly smaller brush to add Faded Jeans around the edges of these, then they too got the glue & Glamour Dust treatment.

All put aside for drying, although to be honest, the Zig glue dries so fast, it takes just a few minutes.

Mounted onto the front of a card blank, they are 6" x4", topfold.




Finishing touch was some tiny acrylic stars on top of the stamped ones, and silver Stickles for the main star.
 Tip here- lots of acrylic gems for nail art are the perfect size for this sort of thing.

Put aside for the Stickles to dry overnight.

All finished, and that's more stash busted, and another 32 cards to the box.