merry and bright (especially BRIGHT!)

we're still celebrating text paper, fonts, lettering, alphabet stickers, quotations and all other happy holiday wordiness at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ with our "text me" prompt, and there's still loads of time for you to jump in and play along! here's what i made this week:

"merry and bright" handlettered with alizarin crimson colorburst using a tim holtz water brush on strathmore watercolor paper tinted with picked raspberry distress ink, outlined with faber-castell pitt artist pen in XS nib, distress ink grey marker for shadow, sharpie white fine tip paint pen accents; holly accents are several shades of blue and green colorburst; gems: eyelet outlet clear edge 12mm jewel bling (the packet has both red and pink gems, yum, yum!); stripey patterned paper: ancient ki memories, you cannot see the shimmer but it's there!; white glossy cardstock: paper accents; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i love handlettering. i may have mentioned that 3 or 4 GAZZILLION times before, lol. at the moment, i'm specifically obsessed with brushlettering as my instagram "following" list and youtube video history will attest. and i've been practicing. i'm still not to the level i'd like to be, and i'm still doing quite a bit of outlining and touching up, but i'm getting there. and i'm pretty pleased with this rendition of "merry and bright" done using colorburst and a water brush. this is quite a pared down card (for me, lol!!!) but i still found room for a few hand-painted holly leaves and some scrumptious eyelet outlet jewels standing in as particularly upmarket berries.

there's loads more inspiration in the readers' gallery and of course stephanie has created a particularly lovely card to show you, won't you hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and check those out right now, darlings? ...ciao...