During one of the pre-Black Friday sales, I picked up a new embossing folder from Spellbinders called Ski Lodge. I think it has lots of possibilities for winter cards, but I have three today that are all holiday cards. I used it to create three different colored backgrounds which I used below, and I have a few extras left for more cards.

The embossing folder is large enough to accommodate a 5×7 piece of cardstock but I almost always make an A2 size card or a square one so I precut the cardstock before running them through in the embossing folder. The detail on this is just lovely. I added the sled and wreath from Honey Bee’s Sleigh Bells Ring set which I purchased a year ago, and had not used.  

The sentiment is from Reverse Confetti’s Christmas Card Greetings–also new. I purchased it when they closed their business earlier this fall. 

For this card, and the next, I cut strips from the embossed cardstock to create the card designs. Matching up the patterns was easy to do. 

The sentiment was hot foiled with Pinkfresh Studio’s Perfect Sentiments: Holiday, and I added a few of their Champagne Glitter Drops. 

Lastly, a similar card but with a different pattern:

Here I cut my favorite part of the Ski Lodge pattern in red and added two narrow strips of the green paper. This sentiment is also from the same Pinkfresh Studio hot foil set.

Some days I’m successful at photographing the wonderful shine of hot foil. This time it was less successful, but here’s a sense of it.

I recently came across two new (to me) card challenges. I love the name of the first one: Let’s Squash It! It’s a card challenge focused on embossing folders so these cards are perfect for their current challenge: Make a Christmas Card.  The second new challenge is Sunday Stamps, and their current challenge is a color challenge. There are five colors, and you must use three of them. I’m sending the last card to Sunday Stamps where I used the red, green, and white.

I’m linking the second card to the current TicTacToe Challenge where I chose the top row across: December Holiday, Use a Die (die cut sentiment,) Embellishment, and of course I’m sending the first to NBUS because this was the embossing folder’s first runs through the die machine as well as the sled’s debut.

There are two important male birthdays in December—my brother’s and my brother-in-law’s. Their birthdays are separated by exactly one week, and they often get the same card. That will be the case this year as well. I finished one of them yesterday just under the wire for the Inkspirational Photo Challenge which ends today, and later this weekend I’ll make a second card. 

All except the stamped sentiment and the background coverplate (Pinkfresh Studio’s Snowflakes Coverplate) are from Papertrey Ink’s Winter Globe set. Papertrey has two different globe sets, but this one seemed the most versatile to me. I have some ideas (which I hope you’ll see soon) for using the globe with other die cuts in my collection. 

The beautiful birch trees are a circle die cut and the snow (die cut with white shimmer cardstock) is adhered to the top of it. I ink blended the background with five different Distress Oxide Inks in purples and blues.

I die cut two of each deer and layered them for some dimension, but then added a small piece of dimensional tape in addition. The sentiment is from Ellen Hutson’s Essentials line: Cake, which I embossed in silver on the bottom portion of the globe.

Hope your weekend is off to a good start! I’m hoping to get the house decorated for Christmas and get a little more crafting done.

The Flower Challenge is looking for floral cards with embellishments. In addition to creating sets of Christmas cards throughout the year, I’ve made a few single cards. 

I originally pulled out the Memory Box “Blooming Poinsettia” die for a big project as a Guest Designer. In the end, I made another card for that project, but had a quite a few poinsettias left over. The vellum circle was cut with Papertrey Ink’s “Shape Shifter: Circle 1.” I die cut the flowers from pink and white cardstock, but added some light ink blending in pink to the center of the white poinsettia. 

I added silver pearls to the centers of the poinsettias, and an additional three to the vellum circle. The sentiment is one of Waffle Flower’s “Essential Christmas” premade die cuts.

Thanks for stopping by! 

A coverplate that had been out of stock for months arrived in-house at Papertrey Ink last week. When I put the order in, I added the Fanciful Snowflake hot foil plate as well. Yesterday I spent some time just foiling with holiday and background hot foil plates. I should have done some of it much earlier, but I now have a wonderful stash of foiled holiday sentiments which you’ll see later for sure. I love this beautiful snowflake, and although it’s large, it makes a wonderful clean and simple card. 

I used a holographic foil from Spellbinders for the first time, and it’s just stunning in real life. You do get a good sense of it in the photos, though. It’s also a bit hard to tell that the card is a dark navy blue.

It really didn’t need any embellishment, but I added one iridescent jewel from Pinkfresh Studio to the center of the snowflake.

I didn’t trust my hot foiling skills enough to try and hot foil a sentiment onto the card front. This sentiment is from Gina K’s “Blizzard” which I embossed in silver and die cut.

I’m entering this in several challenges. First, CAS on Friday where the challenge is Sparkle (and this is very sparkly in person). Next to The Paper Players who are looking for CAS Christmas cards. Then Simon Says Monday Challenge: Fun with Foil, and finally, the Merry Little Christmas challenge (my first ever entry) where Anything Goes that’s Christmas. 

Last week I die cut a series of JOY die cuts from Waffle Flower’s “Oversized Joy” set and created a series of cards all with different backgrounds that I had already created or started. This is my favorite of the bunch, and when I saw the Just Us Girls challenge for creating matching envelopes, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. 

The background for this card had already been gold embossed. Although the stamp comes with coloring stencils, I opted to color it with Copic markers this time around. For the envelope I gold embossed just the flap of the envelope that is so much prettier in real life than in the photo.

The Waffle Flower set comes with many different sub-sentiments and this one was gold embossed on black and trimmed out. The gold “joy” was die cut from my favorite gold metallic paper that I purchase at Michaels in the scrapbook department. It’s resting on a die cut shadow cut from vellum.

Here’s a look at the beautiful textured gold paper. This is off to JUGS as the challenge closes tonight. I’ve been inspired, though, so I think you’ll see more matching envelopes.

Coffee with friends is always a good idea, and I wanted to get a card into the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop. I found three stamp sets with cups and coffee sentiments, but chose to use one I purchased some time ago and never used. Along with the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop, I’m making my second entry into the Just Us Girls challenge to make a matching envelope. 

I chose a piece of woodgrain paper for the card base, thinking it would represent the table. The cute doily under each of the cups is from a very old die set from Papertrey Ink called 
Doily Details. So I have very old and very new represented on this card. All the images on the card as well as the sentiment are from the new set from Simon Says, “Cup of Love.” The tag is also very old and goes back to the days when I was on a design team for an internet scrapbook company. I acquired a lot of Spellbinder products during those days that have held up against the test of time. The image on the envelope came from another older set that was part of a Simon Says card kit, “Coffee and Tea.” I found the heart in a Papertrey Ink set, “Be Mine.”

The cups, leaf sprigs, and spoon were all stamped in black and embossed with clear after adding the latte designs with Cocoa Bean ink. (Pretty perfect ink name!) I added some Nuvo Crystal Glaze to the heart. 

I love this Coffee Lovers Blog Hop logo, and I’m sending this off to Darnell’s November NBUS since Cup of Love had never been used before.

I have one last card for the JUGS challenge, so I’ll be back again tomorrow!