Category: Christmas

Penny Black Joy to the World

Today I’m sharing a card in which one of the holiday die cuts from Penny Black takes center stage. I really like adding metallic accents to my holiday cards, and in this case, my starting point was the outline of the Xmas Tree die cut in silver.

Penny Black Joy to the World

I die cut the Xmas Tree [51-012] in both white and silver cardstock. I pieced the two together and adhered the completed tree with dimensional adhesive onto a circle cut from cardstock stamped with the Penny Black Crystal Pattern [40-162] background stamp. I adhered the circle to a dry-embossed card base, and then I added a banner on which I heat-embossed a sentiment from Penny Black’s Season’s Wishes set [30-201]. I finished the card off with some sparkly jewels.

 

 

Holiday Card Camp Day 4

The focus of today’s Online Card Classes Holiday Workshop lesson is “stretching your stamps,” as in using them in less obvious or unusual ways. It’s a drizzly, cold November Monday here in the Pacific Northwest, so I’m a bit on auto-pilot. 🙂 I followed one of the cards shown by Shari Carroll almost to a “T.”

Holiday Card Camp Day 4

I loved the colors Shari chose for the tree line – and they make me happy! I heat set the stamped trees before I heat embossed the sentiment in silver across them. I tried stamping the sentiment without heat setting the trees, and the trees picked up quite a bit of the embossing powder, even though I used an “embossing buddy.” I used papers from October Afternoon’s “Midway” collection.

There were more terrific cards shown using the Lawn Fawn “Peace, Love, Joy” stamp set in today’s lesson that I plan to craft in the upcoming weeks.

Supplies:

Holiday Card Camp Day 3

The focus of today’s Online Card Classes Holiday Workshop lesson was Clean and Simple Holiday Cards. For my first card, I followed one shown by Shari Carroll.

Holiday Card Camp Day 3

Shari used a repeating sentiment from Lawn Fawn, which was adorable. I looked through my stash and found a sentiment from a Technique Tuesday set that would work, although it wasn’t repeating. Because of the sentiment’s length, I ended up making the card 4 1/2″ wide, to provide white space on the side and bottom. I added some “snowflakes” with embossing paste in the sky.

Holiday Card Camp Day 3

For the second card, I made some modifications to an idea shown by Cristina Kowalczyk. I masked off a triangular area and colored in select parts of the Tim Holtz Dot Fade stencil with Copics to form a Christmas Tree. I wasn’t thrilled with the way the tree sides looked, they were raggedy, so I cut it out with the larger tree die cut from the Sizzix “Holiday Cheer” set. I silver heat embossed a sentiment from the Hero Arts “Naughty or Nice” set – really like the fonts in this set!

Tim Holtz November Tags

Since taking the Online Card Classes Tim Holtz Creative Chemistry 102 class, I am continuing to play with the techniques. For this month’s 12 Tags of 2013, Tim Holtz demonstrated the chalkboard technique we covered in class. I’m sharing two tags using this technique.

Tim Holtz November TagsFor the first tag, I stamped the sentiment and fun retro snowflakes onto the tag. The Santa was silver embossed, cut with the matching Sizzix die, and added to the tag with dimensional adhesive. I finished the tag off with tinsel twine, trimmings, and a Christmas Muse Token.

Tim Holtz November Tags

For the second tag, I stamped the blueprint onto the black tag with Versamark, and again on Ranger watercolor paper with Archival ink. I colored the toy soldier with a variety of distress inks, both from the pads and from markers. I prefer to scribble onto my craft sheet and lift the ink off with a water brush, rather than put the ink directly on the paper. I added some Seasonal Chitchat that I distressed around the edges with Black Soot distress ink. For the top and bottom of the tag, I dry embossed red Core’dination cardstock with the Candy Stripes folder to which I’d applied Distress Embossing Ink in the way that Tim shows in this post. I heat set white embossing powder and then distressed it lightly with a sanding block.

Olive, the Other Reindeer

I enjoy picture books, especially holiday ones! For whatever reason, when Olive, the Other Reindeer was published, it escaped my attention. But the title came up repeatedly on a recent search of “best holiday children’s books,” so I checked it out of the library to read it!

The book’s premise is that Olive hears “All of the other reindeer” and thinks they’re saying her name. I immediately thought of making a card when I saw the image of Olive hanging by a cord from Santa’s sleigh.

Olive, the Other Reindeer

I decided that one of the dogs in the Lawn Fawn set would be Olive (taking some artistic license!). Naturally I turned to the Impression Obsession Santa die for Santa and the reindeer. I heat embossed the Lawn Fawn sentiment on the card base, masked it, and then stamped the Hero Arts background stamp in white pigment ink.

Supplies: ColorBox white pigment ink; Doodlebug twine