What kind of card do you make in January, after you’ve packed away your red and green supplies? If you’re me, you will always and forever uncreatively go for snow.
I have a notebook (I have several notebooks. I have too many notebooks) where I jot down ideas, quotes, and lists. If you polish it up, it’s a commonplace journal. If you structure it better, it’s a bullet journal. In this notebook, I had an idea for an image peeking out of a square cutout on the card front. I had another idea for a snowflake on top of a blue splotch of watercolor.
I decided to combine the two ideas, and have a snowflake peeking out of a square cutout. I’d keep it simple, in blue and white.
Simple, right? Right.
I cut my blue cardstock and white cardstock down to size (4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ for the blue, 3 3/4″ x 5″ for the white). Using a square die and my Big Shot, I cut squares out of the upper half of the 13 white panels.
I placed a white panel onto a blue one and immediately thought: this looks plain. But maybe it would look better with a snowflake?
I cut one snowflake out and popped it into the square. Still plain. Maybe it would look better with … more snowflakes?
Then I got the bright idea to splatter white acrylic paint onto the blue panels to mimic snow! I dipped the tip of a paintbrush into the paint and sharply tapped the brush on my finger. I hated it. The paint was too thick and the splatters looked nothing like snow.
Luckily, I have dotting tools from a nail art kit that I haven’t used yet. I dotted paint onto the panel in two sizes to add dimension: larger dots look like they’re closer, smaller dots look farther away. And suddenly it looked great! So I dotted 12 more blue panels.
While those dried, I reexamined my white panels. Still plain. And since texture fixed the blue panels, maybe some texture could improve the white ones too.
I pulled out an an embossing folder (I have several embossing folders. I have too many embossing folders.) featuring dozens of tiny dots radiating from a large circle. I positioned the card into the folder so that the circle on the folder overlapped the square cutout. And it looked great! So I embossed 12 more white panels.
And that’s when I realized “simple” left the project hours ago.
I taped the white panels onto the blue ones and moved on to cutting 12 more snowflakes. I used a thinner cardstock for these, which meant they sometimes got stuck in the die. I had to delicately remove each snowflake from the die with offset tweezers and make sure every little hole was punched cleanly.
Time to glue! I used glue with a precision tip to coat the backs of the snowflakes and carefully placed them onto the dotted backgrounds.
From time to time I share card-making progress in Instagram stories. I ran a poll asking people to vote between “Happy New Year” or “Snow one like you” as the sentiment.
The pun won.
And then after some stamping and a lot of taping, the January cards were finished!
She may look a little simple at first glance but she’s a complex, multimedia wonder. I think favorite part is how the embossed dots echo the painted snow dots.
If you want to see the tools and supplies I reach for most often, I’ve collected them in one place on Benable. (some of those are affiliate links)
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