This month’s Guest Designer, Mel McCarthy, has designed a darling holiday card in non-traditional colors. She also sent the description below.

Mel wrote: “These little quails from Ho Ho Holidays are so cute, they make me giggle! I mean really, those little feather hairdos — aren’t they the finest case of cute-overload you’ve ever seen? ;O) These two quail buddies were embossed on top of acrylic paint (straight out of the printer with clear embossing powder) and coloured with Copic markers. The waterproofing quality of the acrylic paint not only lets you emboss ink jet printing, but it also lets you achieve feather marks surprisingly quickly with Copics. Best of all, the acrylic lets you erase mistakes in a snap! Over the Copic marker, I’ve added white dots of Souffle pen. The “Ho Ho Ho” sentiment is embossed & coloured the same way as the wee Quails. The 3D holly berries are red glass seed beads stitched on.

“Happy Holiday Crafting!”

You’ll find complete instructions for constructing this faux gatefold card, plus all sorts of other interesting ideas, free templates, and illustrated tutorials on Mel’s blog: Mel Stampz.

Photo and description ©2009 by Mel McCarthy. Used by permission.