Greetings from the North Pole!

Good morning! Emily here with you today for my last post for A Blog Named Hero for 2017. (Seriously, someone tell me where the year has gone, because it’s just not possible that it will be 2018 in a week.) I wanted to do something super fun and festive for a Christmas Day post, so what’s more festive than the North Pole train station?? This card is beautifully flat, aka easy and inexpensive to mail, but still has lots of detail and dimension from a few tricks. Let’s get started with the details!

This card uses the holiday My Monthly Hero kit from this past October… so many darling little bits and pieces in this stamp set; you could go several different directions that aren’t just towards Santa and the North Pole! But, for this Christmas Day card, I wanted to focus on the adorable little train station and Santa train. I started by stamping the train and the train station onto some masking paper, then fussy cutting them out.

When creating a little scene like this, I determine which image would be shown in its entirety as it’s closest to the front of the scene, in this case the train, then all of the other images go behind it. I stamped the train on a piece of watercolor paper using Hero Arts Intense Black ink, then placed my mask over the top and stamped the train tracks and the train station. I then placed my mask over the train station as well and stamped the trees that would be behind the train station. I love removing masks; it’s like magic! After I finished stamping all of the images, I began watercoloring with my Zig markers and damp paintbrush.

When the watercoloring was dry enough, I used a snow writer pen to add some dimensional “snow” to a few areas on the building, ground, and festive Christmas tree. I trimmed the A2 watercolor panel down 1/4″ and mounted it on some red card stock to make a pretty frame. Nice and flat, aka easy to mail.

Well, that’s all for me today… and my last post for 2017! I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday weekend with your loved ones. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!