Holly Jolly Celebration -- and the Tim Holtz Sidekick is coming!

This Christmas card was inspired by the movie Elf.  Such a silly holiday movie! But when I started planning out a card using these cute little gifts from Tim Holtz's Tattered Christmas CMS318 stamp set through Stampers Anonymous, I got a picture of the scene in Elf where Santa's sleigh is stuck in Central Park. So I decided to pair the Tattered Christmas stamp presents with the Carved Christmas 3 CMS315 sleigh and the Great Outdoors CMS321 trees and snow to make Santa's sleigh over Central Park.

There is a LOT of fussy cutting in this card and a lot of work went into the background as well.  To make the background I lightly colored a Piece of Distress Heavystock with Picket Fence Distress Ink and Iced Spruce Distress Oxide. The key here is to keep it LIGHT.

Then I stamped the trees onto the background in Iced Spruce Distress Oxide. I added some spritzes of water to activate the oxide and give it texture as well as a feeling of snow.

The next step was to stamp the snow on using Picket Fence Distress Paint on the snow stamp from the Great Outdoors set.  I also stamped the Carved Christmas 3 sleigh onto the background in the Picket Fence Distress Paint so that the lines and speckles outside the sled would still show.  If you look you can see them in the photo.

The sleigh was stamped in Candied Apple Distress Ink and clear embossed before cutting it out. Then I adhered it to the card background over the white stamped image, but be sure to only put glue along the edges, not the in the center. You need to be able to stack those presents into the sleigh!

Ok, now here is where you can make it much easier on yourself than I had it at the time. LOL! I had to fussy cut every single package and ribbon on those presents by hand because I had the stamps before Stampers Anonymous and Sizzix made matching dies! Tattered Christmas Framelits 662437  How cool is THAT?

Once you have stamped several presents and a candy cane or two, watercolor the images with Distress Markers or Distress Inks and cut them out. Then arrange them in the sled and you are ready to go!

This brings me to the next exciting thing that has happened since I designed this card in August, Tim Holtz has paired with Sizzix in designing a new Sidekick that is perfect for cutting framelits and other thinlit dies.  It will make your cardmaking EVEN EASIER!! 'How can that be?' you might ask. "I already have a Vagabond, or Big Shot or Big Shot Pro, or Silhouette, or Cricut, (or several of the aforementioned) so I really don't need another cutter!" Maybe not, but the convenience and speed of this little Sidekick makes it...well, I was going to say, worth it's weight in gold, but it hardly weighs anything, so I'll say it far exceeds it weight in gold!

Here is a video I made showing why I love it, even though I have a Big Shot Pro and a Big Shot, and why I think it is definitely a must have.

Thank you so much for reading through this tutorial. I hope I gave you enough info to be able to make your own card. 

Have a creative day,

Tami

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