Overly Complicated Christmas Card with Señor Gleason

Hello All!

Its getting closer… are you ready? Well incase you are not yet ready for Christmas and like to do everything last minute like me here is an overly complicated card that you can send out last minute to those that you love the most! This card was inspired by Warhol my favorite artist among other things that I believe once said “A true artist doesn’t borrow… they steal.”

This time we get to use not one… but 5 sets of ink road stamp sets! (I told you this card was going to be overly complicated!) Today we will be using the Happy Holla Days set, Block Party Alpha, Block Party Alpha outlines, Block Party Alpha extras, Block Party Alpha outlines extras. Oh yeah I went there! Just wait till we get to the embellishments part! I mean if we are doing all of this last minute we need to make it really fancy right? Break out your stamp platform, Your heat gun, Christmas colored embossing powder, and put on your favorite holiday movie cuz… we’ll be here for a while!

You are going to want to start with cutting some of your preferred card stock (cut down to about 5 1/8 ) in your favorite Christmas colors. I am a traditional guy so I went with Green and red. Use an opaque white ink to  start stamping the background. I wanted the paper to look like mass produced wrapping paper. Line up the Block party alpha letters and get to stamping.

Follow this up with stamping the next line which should be about an inch up from the last line. Leave space because you’ll need to stamp in two waves (unless you want to buy more sets of the block party sets… Oliver10 at check out!) First wave is “merry” second wave will be “Christmas” or… Whatever you’d like it to say I guess…

Once you have all of the white letters stamped out repeat the process with the Block Party Alpha outlines set. Offset it just a  hair so that it gives it that ghostie/floatie look. I wish I could give you accurate measurements but honestly I just eye balled it. Stamp with embossing ink and use an embossing powder that was the opposite of the color of the paper. Example: If the paper was red, I’d emboss in green. If the paper was green, I’d emboss in red.

You should stamp out as many cards as you need in each stage… in fact stamp a few extra because I’m telling you now… you won’t want to go through this process EVER AGAIN!

Now it is time for you to break out the Happy Holla Days stamp set and start stamping that Santa! You can color him in any way that you want. I have been obsessed with colored pencils lately so I used them and blended with gamsol (same technique that I detailed in my I Wanna Be here The People Arn’t blog post.) Then you an just throw him on the card and make life easier on yourself. You can also add the little circles in black and white like I did. If you want can also add a thin strip of foam tape to the space of the circle and background. This will add depth to the main image.

Now you are ready to slap those bases on a card base and add one of the many sentiments from the Happy Holla Days set. I love this set because it gives you many to choose from! I went with something sparkly as a boarder (you know sparkles is my thing). And throw on all of the embellishments they can hold like the Flat half back pearls- Donna , or maybe the Flat back half gems- Heather  Pearls perhaps? Now rush those cards off to the post office to prove that you didn’t forget and wait till last minute!For all of you hard work you deserve a prize! Enter Oliver10 at check out and save at check out. In fact you can also buy your friends and family the stamps to make the cards themselves! Hey it could work!

Thanks again y’all it was fun! I hope the holla days are treating you well! If you have any questions, comments, or just want to strike up some Christmas cheer find me on any of my social medias. I’ll see you soon!

-Señor Gleason