I am now nearing the end of my Christmas card making for another year and for this one I decided to experiment a bit with some of the materials I had around the house.

As you may have gathered I love the vintage look, so was delighted when a few weeks ago I found the Marianne die for a Christmas lantern in my local craft shop. This was the starting point for the card.

I cut it out of plain green card stock and then ran it through the sizzix on an embossing mat to bring out the detail. Having done this I dabbed it with Momento ink in Cocoa and then used copper and gold inks to highlight it to age the piece.

Once done I went to work on the backing which is from the Papermania range – called ‘At Christmas Time’ I cut it to A5 size and used a pair of scissors to distress the edge before rubbing with brown ink.

I used a piece of plain brown wrapping paper that we happened to have in the house and ran this through the sizzix using a musical score embossing folder. The edges were then torn and rubbed with brown ink and the surface was rubbed against a copper ink pad to highlight the pattern.

I had some strips of brown glitter paper left over from a previous project which I used Marianne dies to cut into flourishes.

I cut a small piece of parchment paper to cover the aperture in the lantern and cut a small piece of white glitter paper to make the candle which I added a brown paper flame to the top and one side of the candle was then coated in pearlescent paint, to give the idea of the melted wax and the flame was coloured using gold metallic ink and red paint

I coloured a white card tag using Tim Holtz Antique Linen distress ink and stamped a greeting in brown ink and edged the tag in brown ink before adding three small copper coloured pearls with pearlescent paint.

The lace was an off cut I had in my stash as was the striped ribbon which I used to edge the lace and add the bow to the tag.

The flowers and leaves have a velvety texture and are left over from a Christmas decoration for my mantelpiece.

Overall I was quite pleased with the look of the card as when I started I wasn’t sure if the brown paper would work, or if the idea for the candle would work.

I am entering this card into the following challenges

http://2sisterschallengeblog.blogspot.com/ - Anything Goes

http://craftyhazelnutschristmaschallenge.blogspot.com/ _ Whatever Lights your Candle http://onestopcraftchallenge.blogspot.com/ - Ribbon and Lace

http://frosteddesigns.blogspot.com/ - Embossing

http://totallypapercrafts.blogspot.com/ -Victorian