Snowflake Joy

Got on a roll today, and put this card together in less than 30 minutes! Of course, the snowflakes were already covered in glitter and die cut -- left over from another project. But I'm learning to cut multiple items at once and then have quick access when I want them.

The blue panel was colored with Distress Oxide in Faded Jeans, Salty Ocean and Black Soot. Then spritzed lightly with water and stamped with Faded Jeans snowflakes.

Next I assembled the elements I wanted to use -- glittered snowflakes, die cut JOY, red and white butcher string from my stash and red snowflake pattern paper from the 2018 Tim Holtz Christmas paper collection. Plus dusty blue card stock for the actual card.

Everything got trimmed, tied and layered. Easy peasy.

The final product -- now I just have to decide who to send it to -- that's if I can part with it myself! I have a habit of collecting these things. :)

Cheers!

Oh, I'm also entering this in the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge:  Let It Snow  

JOY - Snow Play

Snowflakes and reindeer and everything Christmas! I started working on my Christmas cards -- and I was inspired by the Simon Says Monday Challenge -- Let It Snow! My background was inspired by one of my favorite card and craft bloggers, Kath Stewart.

My card combines dies from my stash and some of the new Tim Holtz Christmas papers and Festive Funkie dies. I've always loved this prancing deer and was so glad to have an excuse to use him playing in the snow!

I started off inking a panel with Distress Oxides in Faded Jeans and Black Soot then lightly spritzing with water. Then stamped snowflakes in Faded Jeans and white embossed a few snowflakes.

Since this is one of what I hope will be many Christmas cards, I die cut a bunch of festive greens for about an hour!  Then die cut prancer here, covered him in white acrylic paint and dusted with fine white glitter.

I die cut the word JOY three times and stacked them to give the word some extra depth and die cut the small poinsettia and edged with some fine white glitter.

Then layered the blue panel atop a panel of red stripes and fixed the whole thing to a dusty blue card and voila! My first Christmas card for 2018!

I'm entering this in the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge:  Let It Snow  

Christmas Past

Before delving into my stash of new Christmas items, I decided to warm up the creative juices by playing around with some of my old supplies and created a couple tags. Glad I did, as I really wasn't sure what I was doing and played around for a while to come up with a couple simple tags that will most likely find their way onto a present sometime in December!

This little guy was my favorite of the two. I used Tim Holtz blueprint snowman plus the festive foliage die cuts. The snowflake background is an old stencil I had in my stash. It took a bit of guessing and fussing with some things. I started with these two elements.

Then fooled around with different elements. The snowman by himself seemed like he needed something so I tried adding some pine boughs behind him.

It wasn't quite right, so added some bows. Too many bows.

Then I remembered the set came with this Merry Christmas sentiment stamp so I ditched one of the bows in favor of a simple label. Done!

Here's the second tag - very simple. I've been struggling with how to best use the scribbly Christmas tree stamps I bought a while ago. What do you think? Have you used these stamps? Would love to see what you've done with them!

Gears Alot Birthday Card

My brother has a birthday coming up and it's always a bit of a challenge to come up with masculine cards -- until I fell in love with the gear 3D embossing folder from Tim Holtz.  My brother loves cars -- and has since he was just a toddler so, I created this gear card for him.

The first step was to emboss the gears on blue card stock sprayed with just a tad bit of water. On my first attempt, I mounted the panel onto tan card stock for the actual card, but it warped horribly when I used matte gel, so I redid it and mounted with sticky tape instead.

Next I rubbed the embossed panel with just a bit of metallic rub on cream that I've had in my stash forever. Loved how this gave it a slight metallic look.

Next step was to add to die cut black gears -- also from Tim Holtz. Though I loved the look, in retrospect I sacrificed readability when I added the Happy Birthday.

I die cut the letters and gave them a metallic rub as well, but they just didn't seem to stand out enough.

So, I lightly dabbed the letters with Broken China Distress Paint. This improved readability but only slightly. I didn't want to start over completely as this needs to get in the mail tomorrow in order to reach him in time!

I'm entering this into the Frilly and Funkie Impress Us Challenge -- it was fun doing this and working with the embossing folder.

http://frillyandfunkie.blogspot.com/2018/10/impress-us.html

I just received a bundle of Christmas dies and stamps -- looking forward to diving into them next week!