Crafting The Web: Warm Winter Wishes Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to a Gina K Designs blog hop for Warm Winter Wishes. This is a stamp set designed by Carolyn King, in honor of her grandmother. All of Cammie's proceeds from this set will go to the Alzheimer's Association.

Since I first saw this adorable snowman, I've wanted to give him some twig arms, so when I made this gift card holder, I left the center part of the stamp un-inked and went hunting in the garden for some good snowman twigs. All the details are below, but for now...

For even more inspiration visit Carolyn King - the Illustrator of Warm Winter Wishes and the Idea Center gallery HERE.

Then, check in with Carolyn's special guest designers:

Charlene Merrick

Tina Gilliland

Deb Anton

And, finally stop by these GinaK Designer's blog participating in the hop tonight:

Cathy Tidwell
Cindy Lawrence
Emily Giovanni
Erika Martin
Jessica Fick
Kurtis Amundson
Lee Murphy
Nina Brackett
Melanie Muenchinger
Tami Mayberry

and our CenterStage Spotlight Team:

Joy Hadden
Kay Simmons
Linda Payne
Lori McAree

GinaK will be giving away a copy of Warm Winter Wishes on her blog tonight - so pop over there to leave your comment on her blog for your chance to win the set for free! (If you've already purchased the stamp set, we can swap it out for another GinaK stamp set valued at $19.95 or less.)

To stamp my snowman, I inked all but the heart and arms. You can do this by using a marker to ink up just the specific parts of the stamp you want inked, or you can mask off the portion you want un-inked, with tape or paper.

With the heart removed, there was a portion of the scarf missing, so I used my black Memento marker to connect the ends of the scarf and then added the horizontal segments. If you color with Copics often, a Tuxedo Black Memento marker is very handy to have for instances like this, or if you image doesn't stamp clearly. You can go in and fix things and your Copics won't smear. Before I had my Memento markers, I always had to fix things after I colored my image, or I would get smearing.

I colored the hat with N7, N5, N3 and my blender pen.

Colored the body with C3, C1, B00 and my blender pen.

Colored the scarf with R27, R24 and R22.

Colored the holly with G03 and G07. Colored the nose with YR07 and YR04. After coloring, I cut out the snowman.

For the background I first rubbed my anti-static pad over my paper and then stamped the snowflake with Versa Mark ink. Then I heat embossed with clear embossing powder.

Tore some post-it notes to mask off the foreground and sponged with Bashful Blue ink.

Sponged Ballet Blue ink.

Sponged Inky Blue Vivid ink.

Removed the mask and used C3, C1 and my blender pen to add some shadows to the snow.

Attached the twig arms to the back of the snowman, using Glue Dots, then used Pop Dots to attach the snowman to the background.

To make the cardbase, I cute a piece of Pure Luxury White Base Weight cardstock in half length wise, leaving me with a piece cut to 4 1/4 by 11 inches. Then I used my Scor-pal to score at 4 1/4 and 8 1/2 inches.

Folded at the score lines and then used scissors to trim the small section in a random curvy line to look like a snow bank.

Sponged a piece of cardstock like the background above and then stamped the sentiment. I layered that with Black Onyx and then attached it to the inside of the gift card holder. Added Scor-tape to either side of the small flap and closed it up.