Sending Joy This Season...

TGIF!

So yesterday I was feeling particularly crafty and since I still had the Joy and Peace stamp set and coordinating dies from Hello Bluebird out on my desk I decided to finally make this card that I've been kicking around in my head ever since first getting the set. I love these kinds of layering stamp sets as they always seem to have a cool kind of retro advertising type vibe but to be honest they intimidate me. I'm not a pure stamper who relies on ink pads and solid stamps to create with, never have been. I admire those you do it but my joy has always been with the coloring. Still this Joy and Peace set with the sprigs of holly and pine is so pretty and I really wanted to try my hand at it... while still including a bit of my beloved coloring. So I set about die cutting all the pieces and using a bunch of Catherine Pooler inks for stamping on the designs. I don't worry about perfectly centered stamping, in fact I kinda wonk some of them on purpose because again, I like the retro off-set look. Then I inked up a couple of the birds from the Garden Party set, wiping the ink off the back of their heads before stamping so that I could easily color them into a pair of Christmas cardinals with that funny point of feathers on the backs of their heads. I've always lived with the tradition that having a cardinal on your Christmas tree will bring good luck in the new year so why not extend that little superstition to a card? Once they were both colored I fussy cut and nestled them into their bower of berries. If I'm being perfectly honest I thought this type of card would be much quicker to complete than when I color an entire scene but I was sooo wrong, LOL! I'm chalking most of that up to being a stamp layering noob who second guessed every step of the process. Still, I'm really glad I made the time to play with these and I'm super happy with the card, so all's well that ends well!  ;)

Later gators!  

Supply list:
cardstock- My Favorite Things and Catherine Pooler
stamps- Hello Bluebird (Joy and Peace set, Garden Party set and Cozy Plaid Background) 
ink- Memento rich cocoa and Catherine Pooler All That Jazz, Samba, Cranberry Fizz, Mardi Gras and Deck the Halls
Hello Bluebird Joy and Peace die set
Hello Bluebird Pine Boughs die set
My Favorite Things A2 stitched rectangle stax set 1
My Favorite Things stitched dome die
Kaiser Craft gems
Sakura Stardust glitter pen
Copic markers:
birds- YR07, YR09, R14, R24, R27, R29, E18, T2, T3, T4, T5, T6