A set of Christmas cards with a cardinal

Let me show you the three Christmas cards that I just finished. For the cards, I used the cardinal die, which I believe was created in 2020 as a collaboration between Simon Says Stamp and Tim Holtz and was a free gift with December orders. And I've never used it before. 

The birds

First I created the three birds. The back piece was coloured with brown (Ground Espresso) and black (Black Soot) inks, and the bigger red piece was coloured with Fire Brick.

The rest of the red pieces were coloured with Lumberjack Plaid, Fired Brick and Aged Mahogany.

The beak was coloured with Fossilized Amber and with Vintage Photo around the edges. Later I added Lumberjack Plaid to the brown tail.

The backgrounds

Then I cut three panels from watercolour paper and I started to colour them with Distress inks. I wanted each card to have a different background colour.

One was coloured with Weathered Wood and Speckled Egg.

The second was coloured with Speckled Egg and Salvaged Patina.

And the third was coloured with Stormy Sky.

Then I toned them down with diluted white paint. The acrylic paint is also good for protecting the inky background. When it was dry I spattered with the same white paint to create snowy background. When they were dry I glued them on red background panels.

The pine branches

I wanted to place my birds to pine branches and I found the perfect branches in the Pine Branch Sizzix die set (664228).

I cut the branches from white watercolour paper and coloured them with Rustic Wilderness ink, and I went through the middle part with Vintage Photo marker.

How I put the cards together

So, my inky background was already placed to a red panel. The next step was to adhere to a folded creamy white card. When it was done, I started adding the elements to the card.

First the branches.

Then the birds. I also wanted to add some bigger snowflakes, so I cut out a few using the Twig&Stump (666072) Thinlits die and Winter (663098) Side-Order die. I also added a little sparkle for the snowflakes. First I put Glossy Accents then Distress Glitter. You might see it here:

The texts are from the Stampers Anonymous Tiny Text Christmas stamp set (CMS424).

And you probably see that I added a little glitter and snowdrops to the branches.

With my cards, I would like to join the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: Matching Set