Holiday Postcards

Darlene Pavlick of Dar's Crafty Creations (see the link on the left under My Favorite Blogs) challenged visitors to her blog to make postcards for holiday cards. What an awesome idea! Postcards are "green" (at least half the paper, and no envelope), economical (they only cost 27 cents to mail instead of 42 cents for a first class letter), and they are quick. You can't add any embellies (ribbon, brads, Primas) and no layers either. You can emboss and add glitter, but other than stamping and painting, that's about it.

I made four postcards today, and plan to make a dozen or two more. We don't send a lot of cards out but for those we do, this is a perfect idea, and I like to write my own greetings anyway. Two of the cards I made had some special touches that didn't photograph well but in real life give these cards an amazing appearance.

I used the same image stamp, a country snow couple, for both cards. (Detailed information about the stamps and other supplies is included in the gallery at SplitCoast Stampers.(There is a link to my gallery on the left.) One card was made with a "vintage" style, the other with a more modern or contemporary style.

For the "vintage" card, I used a Basic Grey paper, Granola's Vanilla Bean. This paper is a pale linen with a distressed or antiqued look that is perfect for a vintage post card. For the other card, I used plain white heavy weight card stock.

On the vintage card, I added color using mica paints. These colors are more subdued but they shimmer. For the snow and snow people, I used an acrylic pearl white, which has a similar shimmer. I wanted to stamp some ornate snowflakes but to keep the vintage appearance yet add some "bling", I mixed a little bit of white embossing powder with some clear irridescent powder. Then I stamped snowflakes with embossing ink and embossed them. The result is a glitzy snowflake that is not quite as dramatic as a pure white one, which would have overpowered the vintage tone and background of the card.

On the more modern card, I painted in color with watercolor pencils and then added some shimmer with acrylic pearl paint for the snow. Then I sponged some colonial blue and after heat setting the ink with my heat tool, I washed the entire card with an iridescent medium, making the entire card shimmer.

I use Winsor and Newton's Iridescent Medium. This is a water-based product for use with watercolors. You can paint over something with it or you can use it as the "water" for water color painting. I love the effect. Unfortunately, from a photography standpoint only, it's a headache to try and get a picture without any glare or "hot" spots anywhere on the image.