Not Exactly Sweater Weather

I've got a couple of cards today featuring the recent release from Colorado Craft Company - both using the Sweater Weather Stamp and Dies.

I thought it would be fun to try and "hang" my sweater, so for my first card, I made myself a tiny coat hanger using a strip of wire - I just bent it with my fingers, twisted the ends and then shaped the twisted ends before cutting off the excess - I'll show you it here as it's mostly hidden on the finished card.

Once I'd got my coathanger I made my first sweater - I stamped it only light watercolour paper, and used altenew inks on my acrylic block with a spritz of water to lay down some easy water colour washes.  I then used the same inks with one of the small shading brushes from Waffle Flower crafts but deliberately kept it quite dry and strippled with it to get some sweater like texture.

For the penguin face and snowballs on the sleeves I used white pearl water colour paint from Altenew's metallic paint tin.  Once dry I die cut it and I die cut a scrap of similar coloured patterned paper to be the back of the sweather and used red-line tape to sandwich the coat hanger inbetween.

For my background I wanted something a bit icy looking and I thought the square shapes in the new Color Spots stencil from The Greetery had a sort of ice-cube shape, so I used the two sizes of those with 4 pale and chilly shades of oxides in a random pattern all over my panel of card.  I also added a few smaller shapes using versamark so I could add some glitter-embossing too.

I die cut a circle from the panel, poked a hole just above and threaded my coathanger through.  This means the sweater can swing but won't fall out.  I stamped a sentiment from the same stamp set and then popped it up on my card base using foam tape.

This meant I had a circle of ice-cube pattern left over - so I made a second card.  Another sweater - this time coloured with pencils, die cut an popped up on foam tape onto the circle.   Finisehd with a couple of sentiments from the same stamp again.   Quick and easy and means 2 more cards for the Christmas card stash - more organised than I normally am - there is hope for December yet!

Catch you on Sunday.

Tara