Star Tilda for Just Magnolia

There are so many beautiful stamps out this Christmas! I hope I get a chance to use them all before the silly season is over... yes, I was really bad and bought quite a few this year.

I've been admiring the gorgeous white on white creations around blogland and I've never been able to master it... so I was determined to have another go and this beautiful Star Tilda was perfect!

I used my Cuttlebug embossing folder Snowflakes for the background paper and hid the joint with the lace and ribbon. I used a Cuttlebug die for the snowflakes and Nestabilities Labels 10 and Classic Ovals.  The edges are coated in Stickles Diamond and I've added Kaisercraft blue pearls. The little leaf is a Whiff of Joy die.

For the Copic fanatics:

I had a pack of "Bee Paper" sitting on my paper rack from earlier this year. I bought it as it was recommended by Angie to use for Copics and watercolouring, but as I was a newbie to Copics back then, I really did not like it much and so the pack was sitting gathering dust. Having coloured a couple hundred images since then, lol, I thought I'd give it another try.... and this is the result...

Yes - it is lovely paper and I did achieve a good result (well, I think so anyway!). It is very different from Xpress It Blending Card though. It is very light weight (89lb v's the 92lb of the Xpress It). It does not bleed. It does take a little extra effort to blend so I recommend "flicking" to drag the ink on the paper rather than the little circles that we are usually told to do (which I have to say I very rarely do these days). Due to this it is a little more difficult with the darker colours, but these pale pastels it worked quite well. I also had a go of "tip to tip" blending on the Bee Paper (Tilda's sleeves and headband) and it worked beautifully. The paper has a lovely smooth finish to it, unlike the Xpress It which you can sometimes see fibres on the surface. The ink does show through on the reverse though, just like the Xpress It.

I've coloured a couple more images with the paper since... they will be blogged over the next week or so and on these I've also used distress inks to add shaddows ... so stay tuned if you want to see some seriously terrrible distress colouring!

And if you are going to use alternative papers, test the colour of your markers on it first to ensure you are going to achieve the colour you want as all papers show colours differently!

So.. challenges for this card are:

Just Magnolia #81 - Donalda's sketch

Crazy for challenges - Christmas cards

Crafty Calendar - Winter snowflakes

A Spoon Full of Sugar - Snow/Snowflakes

Paperplay - Ribbon, Lace and Flowers

Cute Card Thursday - Anything Goes

Creative Inspirations - Christmas/Winter

Crafty Cardmakers - Dry Embossng

Crafts and Me - Glitter