ABC Christmas Challenge - W & X are for?

It's the first Wednesday of a new month, so that means it's time for a new ABC Christmas Challenge! Lynda is the host, and the themes are:

'W is for Winter Wonderland'

&

'X is for Xtra Special'

There's a fab prize on offer from Lynda for the lucky winner of this challenge:

Thirsty Brush & Co 'Home for Christmas' stamp & die set!

I got out one of my old Lili of the Valley stamps, 'Winter Bunnies' to create a clean & simple wintry card for the 'Winter Wonderland' theme. I stamped them on to watercolour paper, coloured them using watercolour pencils, then added some sparkle to the snow with some Stickles. I die cut a Chrstmas tree from a snippet of watercolour paper (using a Marianne Designs Creatable die), adding some Stickles to the branches of that too, then placed it along the edge of the card using 3D foam pads. I added a sentiment (form the Woodware 'Foxy Christmas' set), then distressed the edges a little, before adding the panel to a kraft card blank.

I used to think that 'Xtra Speacial' cards needed to have lots of 'stuff'' on them, but that's never really been my thing, and particularly thinking about postage for my Christmas cards (and I imagine that many more will be posted, rather than hand-delivered this year!), my style has become more minimal - especially with regards to layers & embellishments! So, for my 'Xtra Special' cards, I put more time and effort in to make them 'Xtra Special'. For this one, I created an embossed, inky background by stamping my 'Outline Snowflakes' background stamp (by Simon Says Stamp) on to smooth watercolour paper using Versamark Ink, then heat embossed it using 'Metallic Gold' embossing powder by WOW. I then blended Distress Inks over the top (Chipped Sapphire, Dusty Concord, Wilted Violet, Stormy Sky, Broken China & Weathered Wood). I then splattered some clean water over the top, and allowed it to remove some of the ink, to create a sort of 'snowy' effect. I loved the result so much, that I decided that I didn't want to cover it up, so stamped my sentiment (from the 'Letter It - Christmas' set by Ranger), again using Versamark Ink and heat embossing it using the same gold powder, on to a snippet of vellum. I carefully tore along the edges of the vellum, then wrapped it around my background, fixing it in place behind, before mounting everything on to some very 'Xtra' gold glitter card.

It's always to difficult to capture in a photo anything shiny or sparkly, but here's another try:

I'm also entering these cards into the following challenges:

• 2 Crafty Critter Crazies - Anything Goes (just the first card)
• Crafter's Cafe - Anything Goes
• Penny's Paper Crafty - Anything Goes
• Pixie's Snippets Playground - Use Snippets (snippets used on both cards)
• Polkadoodles - Anything Goes
• Simon Says Stamp (Wednesdays) - Anything Goes
• We Love Chocolate Baroque - Christmas

For more inspiration from my lovely DT buddies, please pop over to the ABC Christmas Challenge.