Good morning!  This is Jennifer Rzasa, and I am here today to share a holiday card and tag using Altenew stamps.  I am sometimes stumped when it comes to creating masculine cards, so I kept the color scheme pretty neutral here so that my projects would be perfect for any recipient!

I love using my watercolors, and I wanted to see if I could come up with a simple way to get a hand painted look without all the fuss. I have done faux watercolor in the past with ink, but I was curious to see how well I could stamp with actual watercolor paint…and I was thrilled with the results!  I started with cream colored letterpress paper – it’s difficult to do actual watercoloring on this type of paper, but I knew I wouldn’t be using too much water with this technique. Then, I selected stamps that have hand-drawn designs.  I chose Altenew’s Poinsettia and Pine, but you could use any artistic stamp!

I mounted the stamp onto my acrylic block, then used a brush to apply watercolor paint.  I kept the paint a bit on the thicker side, because a very watery consistency would not allow the detail of the stamp to be seen.  I crossed my fingers, then stamped each image onto the letterpress paper.  Such a cool effect!  To layer images (such as the leaves), allow the first one to dry before stamping the next one.

To finish the card, I stamped my sentiment onto a label die cut from the same letterpress paper, and adhered it over a piece of knotted hemp cording.  The card panel was then attached to the khaki colored card base with foam tape.  To complete the tag, I die cut the image, punched a hole at the top, and tied on the hemp cording.

Thank you so much for stopping by, and an extra big thanks to Simon Says Stamp for inviting me here today!

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