Christmas Cacti Card

Having moved into the desert, I decided to start making some Christmas cards that reflect my current location.  Bring on the cacti!

I started with a yellow piece of paper.  I stamped my cacti stamp on it, and then blotted over everything with a green ink pad.  (If you are wondering, when playing with this idea, the green ink pad was closer than the green paper pile.)   

Next I took out my glitter glue pens, and added some dollops of color here and there on the cacti.  I let them dry for HOURS, because the cheaper glitter glue takes HOURS to dry without smudging into glittery smears.  I then took a sharpie fine tip marker and drew lines to connect all my little 'lights'.  Then I went and cut out each cacti. 

For the 'statement' stamp, I found one that reflected a 'lighted' theme, and then trimmed around it with my paper slicer.  A little larger piece in a shade of yellow behind it brings focus to the words, and then some darker yellow strips behind it bring back the southwest theme.  

For the dunes, I sliced paper to the size of the bottom of the card, then cut some running curves and overlapped them.  I edged the yellow papers with yellow ink to make the edges show up better and add to the two-tone yellow coloring.  

It's a simple card, but it's clean and really lets the tiny bits of glitter show up (though the photo doesn't show it so well, sorry.)  You could add southwest geometric patterns to the paper strips for extra detail, using a black or brown fine tip marker.  You could pen in little 'hawk' bird silhouettes in the background, or tiny scorpions on the sand dunes.  It's important to play up the uniqueness of a handmade card with things that show you took the time to really consider the card.