Whimsy Stamps ~ New Release Week ~ Happy Mail

A very warm hello to all my lovely crafty pals today. Thanks for stopping into my blog. I'm excited to share my 'New Release' creation for Whimsy Stamps with you today! We have a brand new release and it's gorgeous!! I just LOVE this sweet image I got to play with for the New Release. Whimsy artist Crissy Armstrong has a truly enchanting way with her characters. I especially love her 'children' and this image totally stole my heart from the new digital release. She is called 'Pretty Girl Happy Mail'.

I coloured this cutie with Copic Markers. I then added some tiny 'sparkles' to look like falling snowflakes with an ink that toned really well with the colouring. It's subtle but adds a lovely finish in reality. 

I wanted to use a delicious paper that the artist of this image Crissy Armstrong created. It's such a lovely Christmas design, with candy canes and holly from a set called 'I Dream In Christmas'. I wanted to show off as much of this beautiful paper as possible, so I created a gatefold card with a wrap. The pic above, shows the image before I added the lil' snowflake sparkles and also before I added the writing panel inside. 

The card without the wrap looks like this when the wrap is taken off. You can see a peek of the writing panel inside here. Isn't the paper gorgeous?! I just love that you see so much of the paper with this card design.

Opening the gatefold card reveals the red card base sides on the inside and the beautiful paper with the image panel with this lovely Christmas sentiment. I used the same softly toning ink for this sentiment as I used for the sparkles on the image panel. I've edged all the pretty paper panels with Candied Apple Distress Ink.

I used an older Whimsy Stamps clear stamp set for this sentiment. It's so lovely and perfect for Christmas creations. Such a shame how fast things go out of stock! As this is a lovely set!

I love the colour combo of the aqua and red from Crissy's pretty paper. So I used those Copic colours when colouring up my image. The jacket was coloured with BG13, BG11 and BG10. The reds I used were R59, R27, R24 and R22. I decided to colour her Christmas post up in lots of colours, as when I send Christmas mail, it's always a colourful array of envelopes. I've used the 'dotty' technique to colour up the colour of her coat to make it look fluffy and did the same with cool greys on the pom pom of her hat.

This October Release at Whimsy Stamps has some utterly gorgeous images for Christmas and the October Digital Release has some super cute images and digital papers too. I'll be back next Wednesday with my second creation for the New Digital Release and I can't wait to share it with you! Until then, check out the gorgeous October Digital Release at Whimsy via the banner link above. Hugs and happy crafting xoxo

This is a retired Whimsy Stamps die, 

but there are loads of gorgeous new dies available

Challenge Entries:

Winter Wonderland: Anything Christmas Goes

Sparkles Monthly Challenge: #108 ~ Dies & Punches

Christmas With The Cuties: #20 ~ Theme - For A Child

Sparkles Christmas Challenge: #93 ~ Christmas is for Kids

ABC Christmas Challenge: U is for 'Upon' ~ Wrap 'upon' a gatefold base

Merry Little Christmas Challenge: #3 ~ October ~ Anything Christmas Goes

The Merry Christmas Challenge: Sep/Oct Challenge ~ Anything Christmas Goes