A Special Christmas

The Christmas cards we make in our stamp-a-stack classes are of necessity fairly simple and straightforward, so my ladies love it when we do a Special, One-Off Christmas Cards class and go for more detail. This year I have found myself very much drawn to a colour palette of blue/white/silver, as you'll see from my cards.

This centre-step card has a brayered sky background and I used a lovely Cottage Cutz die in sparkly white with it. Love, love, love the soft look.

 Materials used:

• stamps - Holly Jolly Greetings
• card - soft sky, white glitter (non SU)
• other - Big Shot, Cottage Cutz die, Christmas Greetings thinlits, apothecary accents thinlits, Dimensionals, white embossing powder, embossing buddy, heat tool

For this one I had some left over Kaisercraft Christmas paper and decided to use it up. The design on the paper is baubles hanging on a pine tree, so I've used pine branches as part of my accents and coincidentally the sentiment comes from the Ornamental Pine set! Lol.

Materials used:

• stamps - music (non SU), Ornamental Pine
• card - whisper white, not quite navy, silver foil, Kaisercraft Christmas dsp
• other - rhinestones, Dimensionals, Big Shot, Pretty Pines thinlits, silver ribbon (non SU), pine branch punch (Martha Stewart), poinsettia die (Spellbinders), stitched oval frame die, embossing stylus and mat, white embossing powder, heat tool

The next card evolved after much to-ing and fro-ing with different colours, designs and dies, until eventually it became this very serene result.

The large star was cut in vellum cardstock, then I embossed a line down the centre of each point and folded them slightly to give some dimension. They are held on with a double layer of Dimensionals. The sparkly white star on top is soooo pretty in real life; the photo definitely doesn't do it justice.

Materials used:

• stamps - none
• card - pool party, whisper white, vellum, white glitter
• other - Darice embossing folder, Starlight thinlit dies, Big Shot, Dimensionals, rhinestone

A number of my ladies have the candle die I've used for our last card and were keen to use it. In order to give it more emphasis, I cut two and stuck them together, and of course they are wonderfully highlighted by the intricate die-cut panel at the top.

Materials used:

• stamps - none
• card - very vanilla, gold foil
• other - Holly Gemini die (Sue Wilson), candle die (Memory Box), Big Shot, two-way glue pen

Hopefully my ladies will have fun getting through these in class - then they just have to decide if they can bear to part with them and who to give them to!

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez

Christmas Greetings

Our Christmas stamp-a-stack cards for this month both feature two things: the Christmas Greetings thinlits and some sponging - because you know how much I love getting inky!

Here's the first, a classic colour combination (and one of my personal favs) of cherry cobbler, crumb cake and very vanilla.

Materials used:

• stamps - Holly Jolly Greetings
• card - cherry cobbler, very vanilla, crumb cake, vellum
• other - world traveller embossing folder, Big Shot, Christmas Greetings thinlits, gold embossing powder, heat tool, rhinestone, gold cord, wooden snowflake, sponge, two way glue pen, mini glue dot

Once I'd embossed the map, I sponged over it with crumb cake ink, both to highlight the shapes more and to give it a slight aged look, which is something I love on Christmas cards particularly. The wooden snowflake embellishment is left over from last year and my ladies are going to LOVE me for making them tie a bow in that thin gold cord! LOL.

Santa makes an appearance on our second card, something light and jolly.

Materials used:

• stamps - Holly Jolly Greetings, Cozy Christmas
• card - soft sky, basic black, whisper white, real red
• other - Christmas Greetings thinlits, Big Shot, stamp-a-ma-jig, sponge, scrap paper, post it note, 1 3/4" circle punch, two way glue pen

I stamped Santa and his reindeer then placed my masks for the moon and snow before sponging with soft sky ink. I love how effective this is without much work.

Hopefully my ladies will have lots of fun making these. Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kez