Shine Holly Jolly Corner Frame by Vicki Finger

Hello everyone! Vicki here today with a simple card using a technique I copied from our company's founder, Dave Brethauer. Recently, Dave did a short little video where he stacked some napkins together and die cut them. After that, he painted them with some watercolor which gave them a ton of texture. I knew I really want to try that technique out for myself. Here's a link to Dave's video if you want to watch it.

I actually use real napkins at home because I sew. That's one of the perks of that hobby. Also, since we're empty nesters, there's rarely more than 4 of us sitting down to eat and most of the time it's just my hubby and I. I do have one large set of 16 napkins for if we have a lot of company, but 4 napkins are normally how many I make for a set. I'm great at finding the fabrics that have a little over 1 yard left on them and have been clearance priced. However, I wanted to try this die-cut napkin technique, so I ran to my Dollar General Store up the road for a pack of their super cheap napkins. They were literally $1.00.

I love the texture that you can get using this technique and I could incorporate another of my favorites techniques which is to add a bit of gold metallic watercolor to my plain watercolor (Reinkers) to get new colors. For Example, I added red watercolor to this Ruffled Poinsettia but I didn't feel it was dark enough so I went back with Scarlet Jewel and added a bit of gold to that which gave me the effect I was looking for.

For the Leaves, I used Mowed Lawn watered down a bit more, then went back and added another drop of color with a drop of the gold watercolor to get a nice variation of color for the leaves.

I used plain gold watercolor for the Holly Jolly interior Corner Frame die, just n the frame part, but it was bright yellow, so I added a drop of dark chocolate to it to tone the yellow down and add some warmth to the color.

In the end, I ended up taking the gold foiled version of the frame and snipping away the branches because I like the more consistent way it looked to have two gold foiled frames. The other decorative elements are made from a die-cut, watercolored napkin.

After laying the gold foiled frame on top of the holly and berry branches, I let it dry and then added Garnet Liquid Pearls for the red berries and let it dry overnight in my window sill. I added a little Eggshell Pearl from Little Things from Lucy's Cards.

I cut a 5.5 x 8.5 piece of cardstock to make a top folding horizontal card from the color Metallic Nude. I like how it's a nice subtle color to let the dies be the star if the show.

In the end, I decided that I wanted a vertical sentiment down the right-hand side, and so I used the Candlelit Shine Die to cut the sentiment from a piece of Xyroned Gold Foil Cardstock. Because each letter is separate, you can use it vertically or horizontally. I was very careful to place each letter where I wanted them, without pressing down, until I was sure I had them lined up well.

Putting a letter over the poinsettia petal wasn't optimal, but really, I'm probably the only one who will notice. Any time I have things that need to dry, I set them aside and work on other things while those are drying.

I have a more detailed list of all the supplies used over at my personal blog, Twinkling Paper Studio.