Holly Jolly Unicorn Tag

This year, I’m participating in Ellen Hutson’s 12 Tags of Christmas 2019 Challenge for the first time. I’ve got a couple of other tag designs roughly sketched out, but this month has been so crazy that I haven’t yet had the time to sit down and make them. The design for this tag, however, leapt into being pretty easily — it was inspired by Carly’s tag for Day 10. I liked her circular base, the candy-like colors she chose, and her use of holly.

For my tag, I went for a pepperminty color scheme with cool, minty greens, a pink-toned red, and lots of white. Arranging the sentiment took way longer than I’d like to admit, but I’m satisfied with how it turned out — definitely worth all those scraps of paper I consumed while testing iterations.

I originally intended to make a pile of presents for the unicorn to be standing among, but that didn’t work with the circular card, so I ended up going with a wreath of presents and holly in a scaled-down echo of Carly’s. Rather than stamping the unicorn and presents in black ink, which would have been very stark against the white areas, I used a dark purple, which adds to the cool tones present in the rest of the design. Adding dimension to the white body with a purple marker, instead of just grey, further boosted the candy-like wintry feel. I covered all the white surfaces of the unicorn with a shimmer pen, and for once I think my camera managed to capture it decently.

The pearly shimmer pigment ink I used to stamp the sparkles and snowflakes is somewhat opaque, but it has almost no color to it, which makes it impossible to see on white paper unless the light hits it just right. I wanted the sparkles and snowflakes to fill in the space, not just hint at glimmer, so I first stamped Fairy Dust ink three times to get a light cool grey, then layered Platinum Planet on top of it, muting the grey color and leaving the shapes pale but clearly defined. Although the sparkles and snowflakes don’t show up well in the photos, they’re perfectly visible in person.

I almost forgot to stamp the back of the tag, and then I had to scramble to see if I even had any “to/from” stamps to stamp it with! Somehow, I only have these two, so they’ll be getting a workout if I can make the time to create more tags. Do you have any good “to/from” stamp sets to recommend?


Supplies
Stamps:  Lawn Fawn “A Little Sparkle” (unicorn, sparkles), “Winter Alpaca” (snowflakes), “Year Five” (present);  Hero Arts “Build a Wreath by Lia” (holly);  Papertrey Ink “City Scene Christmas Sentiments” (“merry & bright”);   Clearly Besotted Simple Silhouettes (“to,” “from”)
Dies:  Hero Arts “Nesting Circle Dies” (3 ¼”);   Lawn Fawn “A Little Sparkle”
Ink:  Memento Elderberry, Brilliance Platinum Planet;  The Ton Caribbean Turquoise;  Hero Arts Pale Tomato;  WPlus9 Fairy Dust
Copics:  R27+R22 (cheek, rear present), V20+C00 (body shadows), BG32 (hooves and ear);  Sharpie Mint (mane, tale, presents), Turquoise (mane and tail);  Stampin’ Up Blendabilities Costal Cabana medium (mane and tail)
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Zig Two-Way Glue Pen, Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle pen, hole punch

Layton’s Legacy Card Drive

In honor of her own much-missed children, Lea Lawson is collecting sympathy cards for NICU parents who have lost their babies. I really wanted to participate this year, because two families close to my heart have NICU stories.

Some dear friends had boys with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, and after a difficult pregnancy the boys were born three months early. The oldest and smallest twin lived only seven days, and the younger, larger twin was in the NICU for about four months. He has just celebrated his first birthday, but he still has a lot of health issues that require surgeries and regular hospital visits. Last week, I sent off this first card to the family in remembrance of the twin that they are missing.

I made an identical blue one as well as one in peach to send to Lea for the card drive.

Just last week, one of my childhood friends had to induce her firstborn a month early on account of fetal growth restriction and pregnancy risks. The baby seemed fairly healthy at first, but he has developed several complications that the doctors still haven’t been able to diagnose. He’s currently in the NICU and may be for some time, and they’re having to drive in to see him every day. This next card is heading off to her this weekend.

On a design note: I’m not a fan of how it turned out; there isn’t enough contrast between the colors I picked, so it looks flat and very crowded. My friend loves aquas, so I tried to create a palette around that. Since I only have one aqua in my collection, I paired it with a light blue and a light green, and those just don’t differ enough in saturation. If I made it again, I’d trade out the Celadon for Fairy Floss.

Since I already had my stamps out and a pattern perfected, I made three more cards with a different sentiment to send to some other people who need encouragement. In addition to making another with the same blues, I created two with a cozy, autumnal brown color scheme on flecked cream paper. I’m much happier with how that turned out, even if the ink pad was a bit too juicy for the teeny sentiment.

Also, I want to thank Susan for inspiring the design for these cards. I don’t have the same stamps she has, and I didn’t CASE any of her designs exactly, but mine are very much inspired by her series of wildflower silhouette cards. You can find the ones I took the most inspiration from here, here, here, here, and here.


Supplies
Stamps:  Cleary Besotted “Simple Silhouettes”;  The Ton “Beautiful Butterflies 1”;  Simon Says Stamp “Tiny Words”
Ink:  VersaColor Atlantic, Smoke Blue, Celadon;  WPlus9 Fairy Dust;  Memento Cantaloupe, Summer Sky;  My Favorite Things Insulation Pink, Peach Bellini;  The Ton Peach Blossom, Blue Diamond, Coral Cavern, Warm Hazelnut, Found Topaz, Aspen Cocoa
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White, WPlus9 Oatmeal

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”