A Cowboy Christmas

 You may not know this but, I have lusted after this old Stampin' Up! stamp set ( Wild Wild West) for nearly as long as I have been collecting old stamps. When I first started buying used stamps on the bay this set sold for between 75.00 and 100.00 dollars... and I said I would never pay that much money for a used stamp. during that time frame I did have a couple of PSX botanicals that were over 30.00 if that gives you an idea. and the last maybe 10 years or so, this stamp set seems to start at 150 and go up. I've had a set I've been watching a few months that they did lower the start price from 250.00 down to 150 but, I just shook my head over it. And hubs knew it. 

and this set ( not the one I was watching ) arrived in the mail last week. if you heard any squealing I will say it may have come from over here. My first thought was you should see if he will work for a Christmas card. and I kept trying to think of which tree should go into the scene. 

to start with I grabbed this scrap of script paper and stamped him with some Pinecone versafine and then added a first layer of Daniel Smith watercolors to "Da Man" as he is known. 

A few more layers of paints and I started looking at Christmas papers. and they were just too Christmas-y. so, I seen this sheet of Basic grey stripe in the "browns" file folder and thought the colors were pretty close to how I had painted him. after a lot of over thinking, I used an Memory Box pinpoint cap die to cut the arch window into the sheet and then layered him behind that. The pine boughs here were cut from some Die Cuts with a View textured paper and then the bitty bow is from the Spellbinders Parcel & Post Christmas Decorations set. That lace is vintage and the chipboard sentiment is from Tim Holtz. ( I have a plastic container of his chipboard things and I did not save any of the packaging for them, when I cave and buy one it just gets opened and poured into the container. Those big photo corners are from Heidi Swapp and there is some Vintage Photo distress ink on the edges of them and the window opening of the archway here. I did link this up with the September Christmas card challenge going on now for the Fan Club members that you can see here. That's about it from me, Thanks for stopping by.