WWC184 - Helen's All About Holidays Challenge

This week, Helen brings us All About Holidays. It's a fun challenge because you get to pick the holiday you want!

Here in the northern hemisphere, we are soon entering the season we call "fall". And with that season, comes our Thanksgiving holiday. So that's what I picked.

To me, the sunflower says fall. There is something about the sunflower that just makes me smile. Luckily, I just happen to have the perfect stamp set - Painted Harvest.

This card features a lot of new product. But, first, take a close look at the pattern behind the sunflowers. How did I do that? It's not Designer Series Paper. It's not a background stamp. Here's a hint:

When I first saw the Chicken Wire Elements in the brand new 2018 Holiday Catalogue - that goes live Sept. 5 - the first thing I thought of was to use it as a stencil. So, I played around with different ink colours applied with a sponge roller. In this sample, I used Soft Sea Foam. For my card, I used Mango Melody with little touches of Gorgeous Grape.

And, as a bonus, if you roll the ink over the metallic side of the Chicken Wire Elements, you can turn it over and "stamp" it for another look.

For the focal sunflower, I combined Mango Melody and Lovely Lipstick. The sunflowers underneath were done with Mango Melody - I stamped off once for the bottom layer and stamped the top layer full strength. That's an easy way to get different shades of one colour.

Using the stamping off technique again, I used Shaded Spruce to do the leaves. For the flower centers, I used Crumb Cake and Early Espresso, then sponged the edges with Mango Melody.

The ribbon is also from the Holiday Catalogue and is a really fun combo of Merry Merlot on one side and Copper on the other. The punched out leaves are of Copper glimmer paper, also from the Holiday Catalogue.

It's all backed by a Merry Merlot card base.

What will your Holiday be? Want to see what Holidays the other members of the team picked? Just go to Watercooler Wednesday.