A Little Holiday Style

There are less than three months until Christmas!  In the papercrafting world, it is high time to think of Christmas and Holiday Cards. Many Christmas products were release this month but there was one that was a must have for me. Today, I have a Christmas card for this week's Tic Tac Toe Challenge.  Each week they have a Tic Tac Toe Board with 9 different squares and each square has an element to incorporate into your card. You can choose from three columns down, three rows across and of course the diagonal lines as well.  For my card, I chose the center row going down which is Open, Circle and Glitter Paper. Glitter anything is difficult to capture but I'm fairly happy with my results.  You can't really see it looking straight on, but I think you can see it fairly well with the card laying down (click on the images to enlarge them).

This is one of several cards I've made using the new Cutaway Tags: Winter with the Cutaway Tags: Winter Die.  I've made some of these tags using traditional red and green but I wanted something in pink because I love Pink Poinsettias and these tags reminded me of them. I eagerly await Thanksgiving each year because that's when the stores start putting them out for purchase.

I started by cutting several of the Cutaway Tags: Winter from Stamper's Select White Cardstock so that I had extras for the initial run of stamping. While these stamps are not layering stamps that build into a single image, each layer is separate i.e. the large holly branch is one stamp, the smaller branch is another as well as a small and large flowers to stamp those. It took me some time and a bit of practice to get things lined up really well and to figure out how to get my die cut lined up in the same place each time.

I always use a negative from the die cutting as my place holder for stamping, but this negative didn't have a square, it was a circle. I finally figured out to line my ruler up along the center band, top and bottom and made marks on my negative showing the band on either side of the die cut. I put Post-It tape across the back side of the die negative to hold the positives in place and then stamped. That worked great. If I was a fraction of a fraction off (is that a real thing?), it messed up the stamping. I'm not having any problems now. I've also learned that at least for me, I need practice stamping to get a feel for how the stamps look when they are correctly lined up. As they say, practice makes perfect. 

Even though I lean towards cool clear colors, I thought Ripe Avocado was the perfect color for the leaves even though Pinefeather might have been truer to life. For the blooms, I used Hibiscus Burst.  

The cutaway style of these die cuts also makes them perfect to pair with a background color or texture. I used the Berry Wreath Tag Die to cut a backer from Gold Glitter Paper for the Cutaway Tag.  If you don't want the little loop at the top, you can just trim it off.  It's just slightly smaller so it is perfect to go behind in whatever paper you want, but you could also affix the cutaway tag to just your card base as well which is what I did.  I used Foam Tape here. Another thing I plan to do with these stamps and dies is to stack several to make an ornament that could be hung on a Christmas Tree for that season.  I think that would be a fun touch for family.  

I love sending my girlfriends cards with a feminine touch and one of my favorite things to use is a bit of bling in the form of Swarovski Crystals. Tiny jewels can really make such a statement on a feminine card. I attach them with Ranger Multi Medium Matte and so far, I've never lost a single one.  I used Liquid Pearls in White Opal to make the white berries on the holly.  I don't have a nice shade of red in either Liquid Pearls or Tonic Nuvo Drops so I went with white and I am happy with how it looks.  

These tags are designed to stamp the greeting along that center strip, bu I decided to use my stitched banner from Tag Sale: Quilted die set and stamped the greeting there, then attach it with some foam tape.

No matter what colors you choose, they will be beautiful!  I often try to take my inspiration from colors found in nature, but the beauty of stamping is that we can make things any color we want.  Here's another card I made using Pure Poppy and Ripe Avocado inks. I even did a bit of embellishing with a Quickie Glue Pen and some Martha Stewart Glitter that hasn't seen daylight for about 10 years! I plan to play around with more of the glitter for the ornament idea because I have a lot. I bought a whole collection of the Martha Stewart Glitter many years ago as well as a few individual colors in the Recollections and a few of the Elizabeth Craft Silk Microfine Glitters.  I got the latter when my local scrapbooking store went out of business. I've actually played with glitter, liquid pearls and Nuvo Drops this week quite a bit and I'm anxious to try some other things out as well to make my Christmas and Holiday cards really sparkle this year! In fact, I have a fun project coming up that is for my littlest grandson's birthday where I am planning to use some glitter.  His birthday is in a few weeks and we have to return to their home in Texas just a few days after that for some other business. I'm going to keep his card and give it to him later so I can see his face when he opens his card. It will be a lot of fun! 

Thank you so much for coming by and I'll see you next time!