Inspired by Dept. 56

I recently joined a team of ladies hosting the Inspiration Challenge at Splitcoststampers on Saturdays. And this is my very first time being a "daily" challenge host, not a guest. 

And I was pretty nervous in advance about being the person to move the thread and such. I had the idea that I would really goof it up and maybe no one would be able to see it or something along those lines. So, I picked a site, and settled on an Ornament to CASE and then it became, time to make the thread & sample go live and the store I chose ( Dept. 56 ) sold all of the ornaments that I had chosen and removed it's mug shot from the store. 

HA, it could have been worse right? 

at any rate I decided to just plow full stream ahead with this because,

 I really like how this card turned out.

 The oval frame is a Memory box die called Oval die, it was cut with some Neenah solar white, the birch trees and cardinals tucked through it were from an Impression Obsession Die called Birch Trees, the sentiment is from a Power Poppy set called Cozy cupfuls and it was heat embossed in white on vellum and tucked in. the glitter card snowbanks were just cut with scissors. Recently there was a link to this watercolor imprints tutorial in the try a new technique challenge thread and I really loved all the samples I seen and wanted to try it. so the background ( seen below)

Is a piece of watercolor paper that I tried to follow the directions of the tutorial for using a stencil to create a pattern in the ink. but, I think I either did not have enough water on it, or not enough pressure. because, the stencil I use ( tree's) left very faint lines when it was dry but, I was so excited about the gradient of color down it ( this is a nearly perfect match for that ornament and that hardly ever happens to me) so, I was pretty excited about that and decided to use it anyways.
If you'd like to play along with us this week the challenge thread can be found here. thanks for stopping by!