Back to Christmas

It was unseasonably cool here this week, so what better time to get back to making Christmas cards? Through an incredibly long and involved process, I managed to incorporate four different challenges, and only one is Anything Goes! 
Shopping Our Stash's challenge this week is Splish Splash, to use a wet medium on a project. I of course wanted to be a smart aleck and do a stamped card since ink is wet, right? But I decided to get with the program and watercolour. But what to watercolour, exactly? I thought back to this tag and card I made last year. Since I was using a tag element, I checked the latest Tag You're It challenge for further inspiration. I liked the die cut sentiment and the placement of the tag on the finished card. Then it was off to Merry Monday Christmas Challenge and their colours of light green, dark green and red. Simon Says Stamp is my Anything Goes challenge. 
Sorry about all that! Here's my card:

I thought the gradient tag was a great way to incorporate light and dark green. Then I watercoloured through a holly stencil and echoed the light to dark as best I could. The red comes in through the glitter die cut, the ribbon and the card base — I might have preferred a green base, but that particular tone does not exist in my many (many) greens. 
Then I made another one! 

I used a different green (Memento cottage ivy ink instead of Koh-in-oor watercolour) and sponged inks through the stencil before distressing the edges of the stencilled panel. 
One more Christmas card and I'll be up to a dozen for this coming season! 

Supplies (card 1) Stampin' Up real red & glitter cardstock, Strathmore watercolour paper, Koh-in-oor pan watercolours, Paper Smooches stitched tag die, Papertrey Ink joy die, ARTplorations holly background stencil, May Arts ribbon, pop-dot tape; (card 2) similar except: Stampin' Up naturals cream cardstock, Memento cottage ivy & Stampin' Up real red inks