Author: mbpapercrafts

Inspired by Winter Wonderland Arctic or Antarctic animals on a Christmas Card challenge, I decided to use animals as a representation of my family. I struggled just a little bit initially.  I have always thought families represented by animals is cute, and not having any children of our own, I don’t usually use animals to represent our family.  I started with my husband and I, but 2 penguins on the card just looked so lonely. So I chose to represent my dog, Brie, too! I mean, she is part of the family, so why not!  Stampin’ Up! caught my eye with  the Making Christmas Bright stamp set with the coordinating Christmas Bulb Builder Punch (all in the Holiday catalog). I love strings of lights, for every season (I just got my first set of fall ones!). The Making Every Day Bright stamp set uses the Christmas Bulb Builder punch to punch out tiny little “bulbs” for all the other holidays (bunny, spider web, easter eggs, flowers, heart in a light bulb, ect) as well as some winter bulbs of pinecones and a winter sweater pattern. I cannot resist the fancy designer paper with foil, especially copper foil. The DSP is from the Joyous Noel Specialty DSP in Merry Merlot with Copper foil, Whisper White, and Sahara Sand colored snowflakes. I used a Copper foil sheet to frame the dsp and the Whisper White oval with Softly Fallen embossing folder giving the illusion of some snowflakes falling on the trio. Merry Merlot and Copper ribbon, with a tiny strip of Merry Merlot Glimmer paper from the Joyous Noel Glimmer Paper stack was a perfect accent to the sentiment (from Merry Christmas to All stamp set).  I often have a hard time with small, little die cuts like the pengiuns, seeming so small for a usual 4.25 x 5.5 inch card, but I like them here with all the layers!

Continuing my adventure with Shimmer paint, I tried stamping with it directly on the stamp. Wow, that made an unexpected mess. After some more Shimmer paint soul searching, I finally decided to stamp my image in colored ink and apply the shimmer paint very gently with a paint brush to the inked stamp. Wow! I was so surprised that I could finally stamp an image and have some shimmer to it! The first picture is what the card looks like in normal lighting. In the second picture, the light shines off all the places I added the Champagne Mist Shimmer paint. I stamped the “Merry Christmas “sentiment from Mistletoe Season stamp set in Shaded Spruce. I then turned the stamp to face me, and very gently dabbed a little Champagne Mist Shimmer paint on the stamp with a very small and slender paint brush. I just dipped the paint brush in the cap to the Shimmer Paint container. The Shaded Spruce ink from the stamp did get back in the cap, so I did wash the cap out with water before placing back on the Shimmer paint container.  With stamped images, the Shimmer paint will smear the ink when painted onto the image. I did stamp both sets of leaves first, and very carefully dabbed Champagne Mist Shimmer paint mixed with a drop of Shaded Spruce ink, on to the leaves of the image on the top left with the bow and just on the stem on the image on the top right with the bells. It is important to note that I dabbed, NOT RUBBED. Rubbing will just smear the leave image and make a mess. I did not add Shimmer paint to the leaves along the bottom of the card (I was done with the Shimmer paint by that point!). For the bells and bow, I can not tell you how many failures I had. For my first try, I stamped the image with Versa Mark ink and added heat embossing Silver powder to the image and heat embossed it. Great so far, but no shimmer paint added. I then added a drop of Real Red Ink to a drop of Champagne Mist Shimmer paint, and then painted the heat embossed image. I just made a smeary mess. For my second try, I took the Real Red ink mixed with Shimmer paint, and I painted a small portion of paper. After that dried, I stamped Versa Mark with the bow stamp, added Silver heat Embossing Powder, heated it, THEN fussy cut the bow out by hand. AHHH! That worked better with no smear. For the the bells I did the same thing (painted paper, heat embossed, cut out), but with a combined drop of Soft Suede with a drop of Bright Copper Shimmer paint, Silver heat Embossing powder, and used the 1/2 inch circle punch to cut out the bells. The berries are small pearls colored with a Cherry Cobbler Blends (dark) marker. The patterned paper is from the Under the Mistletoe designer series paper. I was inspired to use the Shimmer paint by my Upline Karin Menghini for our team’s Karin’s Crafting Crew challenge. 

I have been trying to use the Shimmer Paint in the Stampin’ Up Occasions catalog like mad! I’m not going to lie, I made many failed attempts using it to stamp, paint, heat emboss, color on an embossing folder, ect. My best advice for anyone new to Shimmer paint, get some scrap paper and set aside some time to see what works best for you. Being in love with the results of the Shimmer paint kept me going. I finally had my “shiver me timbers” moment when I successfully used it with a sponge and a paintbrush (separately).

The first success I had was with using it with a sponge to lightly sponge onto my die cut leaves. I used the lighting below to highlight where the Bright Copper Shimmer paint was sponged. In normal day light, it isn’t so noticeable, it blends much nicer than it looks with a bright light shining on it. The leaves were cut from fall colors Pumpkin Pie, Merry Merlot (my new favorite color) and Crushed Curry. Night of Navy has become a fall color for me as it was to color of my husbands suit when we got married years ago in October. For sponging, I just used a round sponger dauber to lightly dip in the cap of the Shimmer paint container.