Jingle Belles Rock - Week 18 - NO DSP!

If there is one thing I have in abundance (besides ribbon) it's patterned paper. This week's Jingle Belles Rock challenge is to make a Christmas card with no patterned paper! ACK! I've been chewing on this one for a few days, which is really the whole idea of a challenge, right? It makes you spin your brain in a different direction and try new things.

I knew I needed to create my own background. I could stamp it, or dry-emboss it, or ... something. My idea finally came to me Sunday morning: Rubber Band Background! I haven't done this in FOREVER!

First, here's my card:

Now for that brayer thing, here's what you do: Take an acrylic brayer attachment (the clear one), wrap several rubber bands around it, then put it in the brayer handle. It should look something like this:

You don't want to cover the attachment - space is good. Roll the brayer 'round and 'round on your ink pad until the rubber bands are inky - they don't have to be perfect, just mostly inked. Then starting from before the card stock, roll the brayer across the card stock and don't stop until you are past it (this is the standard wheel technique - you start before and end after your card stock). You now have wavy lines! Ink it up again if you don't have full coverage - my brayer didn't span my 4" piece of card stock so I inked it again and rolled it a second time on the other edge of the paper.

I took the attachment out of the brayer to clean it, and I found I got almost all of the ink (SU dye ink) off with a paper towel and I didn't need to wash it or replace the rubber bands. I repeated the steps above with Cherry Cobbler and again cleaned the attachment.

For my last step I ran my brayer across an Encore gold ink pad, ran it across the card stock, and then heat-embossed it with gold EP.

Let's look at the card again:

You can see the background has wiggly green and red and some embossed gold lines.

I started out with the scallops at the bottom, but I decided to flip it, I guess because I could. I colored the mousie with a combination of Copics and SU ink + blender pen. I finished it off with a souffle pen for the white parts of his sweater, and some shiny glitter on his scarf fringe.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go fondle some pretty paper. This was rough.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used:
Ink: Glorious Green (much misunderstood and under-appreciated), Cherry Cobbler, Encore gold, Memento black
Stamps: Hero Arts mousie, sentiment (I forget)
Card stock: Very Vanilla, Glorious Green, Cherry Cobbler, Kraft/Crumb Cake, Brushed gold
Tools & Accessories: brayer with acrylic attachment, rubber bands, gold EP, heat tool, Nestabilities, ribbon, MFT scallop border die, souffle pen (sweater trim), glitter pen (fringe on scarf)