Christmas cards for Red & Heart challenge

I have made six of these Christmas cards for February's  Red & Heart Christmas card challenge on my sister, Sylvia's blog.  They were inspired by a card I found on Splitcoast Stampers. That is where I most often get my inspiration.  I created my card in a landscape format instead of portrait and used a stamped greeting instead of a folded label one but most of the other elements are the same.  

I started by digging the heart punchies (SU) from my little stash bin.  They were not all the same colour so I coordinated my card to the heart colour.  I decided some of my backgrounds would be ivory and others would be white, I cut my quarter sheets and embossed them with a fancy oval embossing folder (SX) then stamped my greeting (SU) using green ink.  I did manipulate the stamp (SU) a bit so it would be curved when I stamped it and that worked great.  I trimmed my backgrounds to leave a small margin all the way around and glued them to my card fronts.  Next, I punched my birds from white and ivory cardstock scraps then I punched the branches from scraps of green cardstock. I decided to have some birds facing one way and others facing the other.  I wish I had assembled one to start because I would have realized that having the branch pointing to the greeting was a great design feature but deciding to change the directions the birds faced negated that on some of my cards.  I will know better next time! I added the eye to the bird using a fine tip permanent marker and I very lightly outlined the beak using a pencil.  I sponged their edges and used small pieces of glue dot to adhere the branches to their beaks.  I added pearl paint to the wings to give them some texture and add a bit of bling to the cards.  Next, I layered my elements onto my cards starting with the hearts, then the bird and finally the pearly wings went on with 3D foam tape.  

I am very happy to have my February Christmas cards already made and hope to keep up with them all year so come November I will have them all ready to send out.  

Therese