January 2019 Keeping Christmas Blog Hop

Hello there!  I have my first round of Christmas cards for the year on my blog today for our Monthly Keeping Christmas Blog Hop.  Kelly Lunceford started this many months ago (February 25, 2017) and eventually the former "The Challenge" designers came to be a part of it.  We share Christmas cards and projects with you on the 25th of each month to show you different ideas, techniques or projects to help you get a jump start on your Holiday cards and tags for the coming year.

I think it was right after Christmas that Concord & 9th had a sale and I picked up a few things that I had been wanting.  One of them was the Deck the Halls Turnabout Stamp.  Since I make Christmas Cards all year long, I knew I would be able to use it, so I went ahead and ordered it.  I must say, I love this even more than I thought I would!  The stamp looks like the image on the right.  You rotate it three more times after your initial stamping to get a completed background panel.  Isn't this just incredible?  This is one of the biggest innovations in the stamping industry in the last couple of years.  And let's face it - with stamps, innovation if a pretty big thing.  Concord & 9th came up with this brilliant idea and I have 4 or five of this style of stamps from them.  They have several styles and bundles available, but their January Release sold out so quickly that those are currently not available.  The thing I most want right now is the templates that go with the turnabouts but even those are completely sold out.  This is not a bad problem to have if you are a stamp company!  They've already ordered more so just sign up for the e-mail notification and you'll know when that is back in stock.

You can use a single ink color or multiple ink colors, or even heat emboss any or all of the layers.  I didn't try that today, but it's on my "to try" list for sure!

For the first group of cards today, I used four different colors on each background.  For the second batch of cards, I stuck with a monochromatic look and used inks from  Papertrey, Altenew and Gina K Designs.  Since Altenew Inks come in color families, they are perfect for this technique.  I'll share each of the colors as I go along so that you can replicate them if you like.  I really love the coral one even though it has non-traditional colors.

As much as I love adding dimension on my cards, they cost quite a bit more to send so when creating the cards that I mail or that my Sisters-In-Law mail, I try to keep them fairly flat.  I did add a poinsettia to each one using the Spellbinders Layered Poinsettia Dies.

For these first three cards, I used 4 different colors.  I always end up with an odd number of cards because I do a test run first.  That is the first card on the left here.  The colors I used on this one are Papertrey Ink, Vintage Jadeite, Pure Poppy, Pinefeather, and Scarlet Jewel.  The middle card also uses Papertrey Ink'ss in Sweet Blush, Autumn Rose, and Ocean Tides with Gina K Designs Christmas Pine.  The Christmas Pine has a little less black in it than Pinefeather, making it a little more green.  The last card on the right-hand side is Altenew Coral Berry, Ruby Red, Sweet Leaf, and Just Green.

The first card on the left uses all Gina K Designs inks in Sea Glass, Ocean Mist, Turquoise Sea and Blue Lagoon.  Next up we have the Sweet Dreams Collection of inks from Altenew; Dew Drops, Aqualicious, Teal Cave and Galactic Stream.  The third card uses Gina K Designs in Powder Blue, Blue Raspberry, Blue Denim and In The Navy.  The last card uses Papertrey Ink's Lilac Grace, Lavender Moon, Amethyst Allure and Gina K Design's Plum Punch.

Here's a close up for you of a few of the cards.  Using my MISTI, I heat embossed the sentiment 3 times on each card.  I used Antique Gold Embossing Powder from Simon Says Stamp for all but one of the cards.

I think this is my favorite of the group.  I like the slightly larger poinsettia and the deep rich color of the 4th layer.

For the Blue Monochromatic Card, I used Silver Embossing Powder but it definitely doesn't stand out as much as the gold.  Unless I am using dark cardstock, I pretty much never like Silver Embossing Powder but it's good to try new things once in a while.

The Merry Christmas greeting came from the Concord & 9th Very Merry Sentiments stamp set.  I wish they had made a coordinating die but maybe another time they will.  I love the size and style of this font!  This was a quick way to make my own designer paper for Holiday Cards and once that was done, assembly was fairly easy.  Heat embossing three layers took the most time of anything for sure!  It requires a lot of patience, care, and powder tool to get it in the same spot each time!  But I do love how bold it looks.  I tried out some large particle embossing powder, but that was not a good thing to do.  I'll go into the why's of that in another post sometime.

If you haven't seen the genius of the Turnabout Stamps from Concord & 9th, be sure to stop by their store and check out the video tutorials they have here.  In addition to that, Jennifer McGuire has several on her YouTube Channel here.  That links to her turnabout playlist and right now there are 15 videos there!

Thank you so much for stopping by today.   Here are all the stops on the hop!

Kelly Lunceford

Anita Madden

Broni Holcombe

Claire Broadwater

Julee Tilman

Kim Heggins

Lori Tecler

Nance Salkeld

Nina Forsyth

Rachel Bergfeld

Vicki Finger (You are Here)
Nancy Guse

I hope you enjoy all of the projects for today!