Good Friends - Sami Stamps Release Reminder

Happy Happy Friday!!!
This has been a stressful week for me.  Lots of stuff running through my brain and changes I'm trying to work on.  It's a little overwhelming and sometimes I want to just curl up on the couch and quit, but I love this job too much to give up.  But at least it will be the weekend soon and I can spend some time cuddling my hubby :)

I spent a little time this week working on a card using one of the newest Sami Stamps release images.  It's also the last week for our current challenge - Add Sparkle - and the last week for you to purchase at least $4 in stamps from Sami Stamps and be entered into a drawing to win %15 off every order you place in 2016.  Sounds like a great deal, so don't miss out!!

For my card, I've used the super cute Winter Sweater image.

While thinking up a layout for this card, I decided I wanted to do some sort of simple design in the background.  I love to come up with my own backgrounds and designs, so this was the perfect opportunity for that!  Since it is a winter image, something swirly would work well!  I created a cut file in my Silhouette software and then changed the line style to a dash.  I loved the swirl design, but wanted it to just be the pattern on the paper, not an actual cutout and I thought the dash would be cute.

I wanted to highlight that pattern a little but wasn't sure what ink would do, so I started super light.  I think because the Silhouette is just a blade that cuts the paper, instead of like a die that presses into and cuts the paper, those little dashes are raised just a little and catch more of the ink.  So a super light pass actually highlighted them perfectly!  So I left it like that and moved on to my image.

I printed it off twice so that I could cut out the sweet girl and layer her onto the inked up background.  I used my ShinHan markers to color her and added a ton of shimmer to her scarf and hand mitt thing.  There is also a bunch of sparkle on the snowflakes in the sky and on the background.

The sentiment is from My Cat's Pajamas, and I've heat embossed it in Liquid Platinum onto some sparkle vellum.  A few sequins scattered around the card, and it was done!!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    AAA Cards #56-Winter Wonderland
    Addicted to Stamps #177-Make Your Mark
    Crafty Catz #308-Girls Just Want to Have Fun
    Sketch Saturday #395

Thanks so much for visiting!  Have a fabulous weekend! <3