Plaid Christmas

 Happy Wednesday!!  It's time for another challenge from The House That Stamps.  This week it is: Show us your Sparkle and Shine.

And here is the card I created:

To give credit where credit is due--I was looking through some challenge blogs for ideas and came across the CAS Christmas Card Challenge whose challenge this month is to use plaid.  That got my mind thinking and I scrolled down to see what the designers had done with it.  I saw this card and just HAD to CASE it!

I LOVE those adorable plaid mittens and the simple layout!!  So, it reminded me that I have a mitten stamp from Repeat Impressions and I'm not even sure I have used it before.  It was time to pull it out and get to work!

I went over to my (very giant) stack of patterned papers to look for a suitable plaid and came across a bunch of embossed panels that I had won a long time ago as part of a prize.  The one on top was this beautiful winter/snowflake pattern--it was perfect!  All I had to do was die cut it with a stitched rectangle die.  Then I got to work on my mittens.  The stamp is only one mitten and it has a pattern on it, which I didn't want because I wanted the plaid paper without added pattern.  So, I had to get a little creative to make my pair of mittens.  I started out by stamping the image two times on scrap white card stock and then fussy cut them out.  Then I used a black marker to put ink only on the outline of the image before stamping it on the plaid paper.  I had to do this a couple times to get a good impression as I was being very careful not to get any ink on the inside of the image.  I did have to fill in lines a little bit with a black pen to finish it off.  Then, because I wanted a pair of mittens, I needed a mirror image of the first one.  But, it's too much work for me to do that and I really don't have good turn out usually with that technique, so I stamped the image on the BACK of the plaid paper for my second mitten.  Then I fussy cut out both plaid mittens.  For the one I had stamped on the back of the paper, I just took my black pen and carefully drew around the outline on the patterned side of the paper to make it look like the other one.  Then I flipped over one of the original white mittens and adhered the plaid mittens in place.  Voila!! A mirrored pair of mittens!  I added a little bit of jute twine to hold them together (no one likes lost mittens!!) and finished the card off with a sparkly die cut "Merry Christmas" and a few red pearls.  You can see the red glittery sentiment better in the photo below:

                                                       

I realized that the card really didn't show off much of the Mitten image itself, so I decided to use it on the inside to decorate the sentiment.  Here you can see how the image actually looks with it's pattern.

I stamped the mitten twice just how it is.  You can see that the don't mirror each other here, but it didn't really matter as they weren't the focal point and I don't think you would even notice.

Thanks for stopping by!  Make sure you head on over to The House blog to see what the rest of the Design Team has done with this challenge.  And if you "need" any of the stamps I used, check out my 10% off your entire order coupon code over in my lift sidebar.

Supplies:

Stamps: Repeat Impressions "Mitten" and "May the miracle . . ."

Dies: MFT "Blueprints 13" stitched rectangle

Challenges:

Crafter's Cafe #273--anything goes

Penny's Challenge #504--anything goes

Christmas Cards All Year 'Round--something that starts with Q and/or R (I used Red)

Pattie's Creations #186--anything goes

ABC Christmas--S is for stencil, T is for two (I used 2 mittens and 2 words in my sentiment)

CAS Christmas Card--plaid

Merry Little Christmas #38--anything goes

CRAFT #610--Christmas

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge #558--anything goes with the optional twist: something beginning with S (I have snowflakes in my embossed background and a Sparkly die cut sentiment)

Lil' Patch of Crafty Friends #165--anything goes

Simon Says Stamp Monday--stamp it