Un-Jolly My Holly

 Hello Crafters! 

Sometimes I forget about really fabulous places you can find inspiration and interaction. Ever happen to you? Maybe there is a blogger you totally love but then you lose your mojo or take a vacation and then when you come back to crafting there are a hundred different things going on in the crafty community and you just "misplace" them. 

Yeah that happened to me and Moxie Fab. It's not that they stopped being awesome. I just got caught up in other bloggers, pinterest, and all these other places I go to when I'm needing a little crafty boost. The other day I was searching around on pinterest and someone had pinned a fabulous card. It linked back to Moxie Fab and I was "Moxie Freaking FAB!! Duh!" 

Anywho they are holding a fabulous (Fabulous Friday to be exact) challenge, as they so frequently do, and I am super excited to be playing along again. It's an inspiration photo. 

In case you didn't know I love nail polish. I have a whole bucket, yes bucket, of it. I frequently change it even if it's not chipped just because I want to try another one in the bucket. I originally tried to do an awesome nail polish marble technique I saw on Kara do. You can see the tutorial here.  Her card is awesome. Mine was not so much. I'm sure it was user error. So instead I decided to go with what I love. Colors, colors, colors!

I also used the current sketch at Retro Sketches which is super fun. Here is the sketch

I turned the sketch. 

I thought it might be kind of hard to see how I used the sketch so I'm showing you  exactly how I was looking at it . . .

I used Hero Arts set Holly Jolly. It's a new Christmas themed set but I thought the leaves could be beautiful in fall too. I adored the bold jewel tones in the inspiration photo and I new the only way I was going to get that kind of saturation was by using distress inks. 

I started by stamping the holly on a piece of white and coloring it with distress inks. I'm going to list them because sometimes people want to recreate and I wouldn't want you to wonder ;) If you aren't recreating skip this part. It's boring. ha!

I used crushed olive, mustard seed, ripe persimmon, festive berries, seedless preserves, picked raspberry, dusty concord, and chipped sapphire. The seedless preserves was combined with the picked raspberry to get the cranberry color (which might I add I completely love!!) and dusty concord was used with the chipped sapphire to achieve the blue violet.  I really wanted the colors to be as close to the beautiful hues in the photo. 

Once I had a base panel colored I stamped even more holly, trimmed them out, and colored them with the same distress inks. I wanted it to feel like a pile of leaves with that texture not just flat to the card. I adhered just the middle of the leaves so that the edges were free. I added some white dots to the leaves because well, I can't stop putting them on everything. Sometimes something just sticks with you!! I also added stickles to the edges. They kind of look like they were dipped in sugar :)  

I cut a second panel of white by partially tracing a circle die to be my second "box' in the sketch. I die cut the happy from Simon Says Stamp colored it with the seedless preserves/picked raspberry combo and put it back in place. Add more glitter :) I heat embossed the "Autumn" from Hero Arts Season of giving onto black card stock and added it flat. The sentiment felt too bold on top of all that color so I framed in the window with a black pen. It seemed to help tie in the black sentiment. The white panel was adhered on top of the leaves with dimensional adhesive. 

Alright this was long as what! Thanks for hanging in there and for visiting me :) 

XoXo