BYSHC Falling for the Holidays 2026 - Card 8

    Here’s my eighth card for this fall’s Linky Party! Wow… never made this many in a row! Join in the fun this last day for a chance at winning a prize from a sponsor! Check it out here:

BYSHC 2026 Linky Party

So, been meaning to try this out with watercolors and finally had the time to do it. Basically, I used the inside ring of a used Scotch tape refill to lightly “stamp” circles on a leftover piece of Arches watercolor paper. For each circle, I laid down on a flat mat the watercolor paint I wanted, dipped the ring into the paint and tranferred it to the paper. I then used the paint from my palette to loosely paint the ornament. I added a darker hue color on each ornament to add depth. I sprinkled a little bit of Schminke gold powder on the mat and using the wet brush I picked up the powder and added gold drops here and there into the wet paint of each ornament. I repeated this twice to create the other 2 ornaments. Hard to see but there are gold blobs in each ornament. 

I painted the tops of each ornament and the string/wire holding each. I used a brown pen to outline and firm up the edges. Not wanting to stop there, I decided to use a good metallic pen to add decorations on each ornament. I then used paint and brown and white pen to add shadows and highlights. Obviously I wasn’t going for realism here… just impressions of ornaments. I spattered paint around the paper. Here’s a mid-process capture of my efforts to see what I was working with… obviously I kept fussing with it.

I looked through my stash of Christmas patterned papers for a background I could use to create a card. I found a Unity paper I thought was the loose style I was looking for from the pack Quiet Christmas Morning. To match the paper color, I loosely watercolored in a matching background behind the ornaments and added shadows. 

Finally, I found a sentiment that I could use from Unity’s Festive Flair kit. I embossed it using a Seth Apter powder onto a paper from Unity’s Frostborne pack (what can I say… colors matched). I backed everything with a brown patterned paper I had and called it done. The card base is an unusual size I had on hand that worked.

I think it turned out pretty festive and liked the loose watercolor style. I’ll be trying this again to make more cards. What do you think… did it work? Thanks for stopping by!