Cheery Rainbow Christmas with Guest Designer Meghan Peterson

It's the last Friday of the month, which unfortunately means that we're saying goodbye to this month's guest designer Meghan Peterson. It's been a pleasure having her this month, and you're going to love her last project. Here's Meghan with all the details:

Good morning all! Today is my final day at Neat & Tangled as their Guest Designer for this month. It has been such an honor to be a part of this, and thank you all for joining me!



Today I decided that since Christmas is less than a month away (when did that happen??), I would make a true Christmas card. However, I wanted to try it with a twist and to make a rainbow Christmas card. I was skeptical about how it might turn out, but I actually really like the cheery feel of this card.

I started by taking a watercolor paper panel, the size of an A2 card and cut it in half, hot dog style (or vertically if you’d like to be technical ☺). I took my distress inks and smeared the rainbow colors I wanted onto a craft sheet (acetate or shrink wrap would work for this also). I then took one half of my watercolor paper, and smeared heavily and richly my distress inks in rainbow order. I added water to emphasize the watercolor look, and made sure to put the colors closely together so you would get multiple colors in each tree. I put this aside to try.



I then took the second half of my watercolor paper and diluted the colors still on my craft sheet with more water, and added more water as I applied them, in the same rainbow order, but not with the exact same color ratio as my first panel. This variance will only add to our piece. After I had a pale watercolor rainbow, I let that try as well.

As they dried, I took my card panel (not watercolor paper), and added sparkly snow falling from the sky, partially using the snow stamp from Neat and Tangled, and then added in more dots where I wanted. I debated heavily with myself about adding color to the top portion as well, but decided I wanted my rainbows to be the color focus and left the top part completely white (unless you count the iridescent sparkle).



I then die cut my trees (Scandinavian Prints Christmas) and my houses (Warm Winter Scene Cover Plate) from my dried watercolor panels. On the trees, I stamped the black detail stamps for a fresh contrast to the colorful watercolor. I then built up my neighborhood along the bottom with my pale trees in the background behind some vellum and my Christmas village houses in the front.

I stamped my sentiment in black ink over the houses (Scandinavian Prints Christmas), and then some tree branches from . This gives a modern looking card that is still bright and cheery. I’m thrilled with out in turned out.

Thanks so much again for joining me, and I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season.

Xoxo

Meghan