Hello there and welcome to our new challenge at Sparkles. Angela has chosen ‘gnome home for the holidays’ as our theme this month, so Clarity’s ‘letterbox gnomes’ got to come out and play one more time!

I started with the holly stencil from Clarity’s ‘christmas rounds’ set and laid it over the front of a 5×5 card blank that I’d made from ‘very vanilla’ cardstock. I first ran it through my embossing machine to give the design a little definition, then used a fine micron pen to outline each of the holly leaves and berries. I used a sponge to add ‘rustic wilderness’ Distress Oxide to the leaves and ‘festive berries’ to the holly berries (of course!)

I stamped one of the letterbox gnomes at the bottom of the wreath, with ‘peace on earth’ on her little noticeboard. I grabbed a couple of my Pergaliner pencils in red & green to shade in her hat & coat.

I thought she should get a bit of an uplift for Christmas, so used my WOW embossing pen & metallic gold powder to heat emboss her nose, the buttons on her coat & the spots on her hat. As it happens, I think the ink was still a little damp and the gold powder caught her plaits as well, which was a very happy outcome!

Here’s the finished product.

Come on over to Sparkles and join our gnome-fest! This one runs until 14th January, so there’s lots of time to play along. Meanwhile, I’m heading over to link this little lady up with The Paper Players as she’s wearing their colour palette!