Tray Tuesday....holiday cards with embossing + watercolor

It's Tray Tuesday and today I'm sharing the watercoloring process I used on these cards over on the Gossamer Blue blog.  In my tray, which is a vintage wooden utensil tray, I have the Get Happy holiday collection from Gossamer Blue.  

Get Happy is wonderful holiday collection of patterned papers, embellishments and stamps.  There's the traditional red and green plus a lot of fun colors and patterns mixed it.  Just what I like in a scrapbooking collection. 

So these are the holiday cards I created with the Get Happy collection.  I mixed in my own cardstock bases, ledger paper, twine and sentiments. 

All of the focal images on the cards are images from the Get Happy stamp set.  I used journaling cards for easy bases and embossed all the images with gold embossing powder.  Next I got out my watercolor set and mixed up a nice holiday green that coordinated with the patterned papers from Get Happy.  I first painted over and around my embossed images with clean water.  Then I dipped my brush into the green paint and let it bleed into the water soaked paper.  

The paint soaked into the wet areas, creating a wonderful organic look.  I especially love it looks with the embossed wreaths.  I also dipped my brush in paint and flicked more paint onto my journaling cards.

You can see the shiny look of the embossing against the watercolor really well in the photo below.  I colored in the snowflakes too which gave the appearance of stained glass.  I had my gold leaf pen handy so I ran that along the edge of all my painted pieces.

Lots of paper layer and some red stitching for a fun, homespun look. 

I finished my cards with lots of wood veneer pieces, hand cut flags, paper clips, typed sentiments and gold baker's twine. 

The gold embossing and all the little gold finishing touches really make the cards sparkle and shine. 

Add in some woodgrain paper and wood accents and you a little woodland look to holiday projects. 

Six holiday cards in my stash. That's a good thing. 

It's early in the season so you could definitely break the steps down into separate crafting sessions.  Maybe do the embossing one day and the watercoloring another day.  Maybe the rest of your items could be organized and ready to go in a fun tray.  You know I love that idea.  

Thanks for stopping by today.  I haven't forgotten about Halloween this week...or Thanksgiving...but it's always good to see samples and have a plan, right?  While we're talking about the Christmas holiday....the December Memories kit is coming right along.  Final products are making their way to Lori and we'll be seeing more sneaks hopefully soon.  So stay tuned.  :)