Rudolph Day Challenge # May 2023

I am trying a few different techniques to make cards this year as my hands have not allowed me to do much stamping and colouring, so this month I had a go at casing a card I received last Christmas. I liked it but it didn't lend itself to recycling as the only option would have been to just cut out the whole card front and put it on a new card base - not what I do. 

So instead I used Photoshop to download one of my 'go-to' backing papers and typed the word Peace on to it in upper case letters. Then I isolated each letter and adjusted its size to add interest.

Next I searched though the hundreds, (possibly over a thousand) scrapbook kits that I have on my computer, trying to find a Christmas one that had pictures of the nativity characters that weren't cartoon ones. It turned out I had very little choice but eventually settled on these ones.

I sliced the group of three kings to give one single one that I moved behind the letter 'P' and two that I placed in front of it. I similarly split the two shepherds to put one in each layer, and resized the Mary-Joseph-baby trio to fit nicely into the letter 'C'. 

I then spent ages searching for an angel that was seated and looking down and managed to find one in free clip-art. So I resized her to sit on top of the A.

When I was happy with the composition, I cropped it to fit on a DL card and printed it. 

Then I ungrouped the layers and removed the three front layer elements to print separately, and finally removed the back layer leaving only the script. I was able to trace this, and cut it from some gold textured paper in my silhouette, also cutting a simple star from my library.

After many years of using my silhouette cameo machine, I have now learned to successfully use the print and cut feature, (I have had very mixed results up to now but I think I have finally cracked it!), so I took my three printed foreground characters, traced them in the silhouette software and sent them to cut out. 

Then it was a case of gluing the background picture to a DL base card, adding the gold letters and star, and then decoupaging the two kings, the shepherd and the angel with a little silicone glue to give them some dimension.

All this was a bit time consuming but once I was happy with how it came together, I made three more identical ones very quickly, and would be able to make more just as easily if I need them.

I know there is more detail here than some of you need to see, but I know some folk like to see how a card is made so hopefully I have answered all your questions.

Now it is time to link up to the Rudolph day Challenge at Scraps of life by Scrappy Mo.