Day 5 of Holiday Card Class

Day 5 is to come up with His and Her cards. I basically used the exact same card for both but just swapped out a few elements that I thought could read either more masculine or more feminine.

My masculine version I went with more traditional colors of red & green. For the background paper I used a plaid. My focal stocking is one that has a strip of argyle which lends itself to a more masculine bent. I added a touch of glitter with wink of stella because I just couldn't resist and it's pretty subtle so I think I can get away with it.

My feminine version I went with less traditional colors of Bashful Blue and Rose Red. Background paper is light blue with a more delicate pattern and the focal stocking has a snowflake instead of argyle strip. Kept the touch of glitter with Wink of Stella.

That about does it for today.

Stamps: SU Stitched Stockings, Many Merry Messages
Ink: SU Bashful Blue, Rose Red, Wild Wasabi, Poppy Parade
Paper: SU Whisper White, DCWV Basic Christmas and DCWB Basic Winter Stacks
Other: dimensionals, Wink of Stella Clear

Day 4 Stretching your holiday stamps... or using non-holiday stamps

Today's homework is to use holiday stamps in a creative way or as a twist use a non-holiday stamp to create a holiday card.

I used a stamp set from Close to My Heart called Connections that has a bunch of circles of different sizes. My thought was to use them to form a Christmas tree. I used Old Olive green to form the tree and then Raspberry Ripple to add the "ornaments". A few dots with a gold pen and some rhinestones to finish the tree off. The greeting is from a Christmas Carol from Kaiser Craft (I think).

Back to Day 2

So Day 2's class was about using die cuts and one of the techniques was using an inlay technique similar to that done with wood working. In fact the instructor used wood veneer paper. Very cool.

So I don't have any wood veneer paper (and yes I'm sure that some of you are surprised that I don't have that particular item in my stash of goodies)... but I do have some velvet paper that I bought from Stampin' Up! years ago and have never found the right card to use it for. Well this is the card...

So my first attempt, not so good... the card turned out okay eventually but boy did it take a lot of fiddling to get it to look right. Second attempt much better. First of all it was much easier and as a result looks much bette r. Love it!

So my problem is that I used a snowflake die that was very intricate and once I cut the words the pieces got even smaller. My first attempt I cut the words first and then the die - do not recommend.

Second go round... cut the snowflake first and didn't remove the die right away. I flipped the die over so that the paper was on the top and used some eclipse tape to hold all the pieces in place. Pressed down to transfer all the small pieces to the masking tape. Then I removed the die from the velvet paper, added sookwang tape to the back. From a scrape piece of release paper from sookwang tape I cut the snowflake die again. Used that on the negative space on tope of the sookwang tape and used it as a template to position all the little pieces. Sounds complicated but worked great.

Then I cut the words 2x - once out of the velvet paper and once out of Wasabi Green cardstock. Added more sookwang tape to the back of the velvet paper and inlayed the green words into the velvet paper. Final step was to remove the release paper from the snowflake, revealing the sookwang tape. Added Dazzling Diamonds glitter. Then just mounted on Wasabi cardstock and then on a white card stock.

A little complicated but I am very happy with how it's turned out.

Skip Class Day 2 and move to Day 3

Okay... so inspiration doesn't always come in a structured manner... so we are skipping day 2 while I think about that for a bit more and moving on to day 3. Day 3 homework is to create a clean and simple card. Here is my version

Stamp: SU Scentsational Season, Holiday & wishes
Paper: SU Very Vanilla, SU Patterned Paper
Ink: SU Real Red
Other: Fine gold glitter, Sookwang tape, dimensionals, SU coordinating die, SU Gold Cord

Holiday Card Class

So I'm taking another card class... this time the focus is on holiday cards. Just what I need to get the ball rolling ...

So the first day of classes provided some great inspiration. The card I'm using for inspiration involved a Z-fold card with a banner that spanned the entire card. I liked the colors of kraft and a light blue and light green and decided to pull from those.

So I took a Sizzix Snowflake Die for the focal point, a snowflake embossing folder for the background, some Kraft for the cardbase and light blue cardstock for the snowflake. I wanted a "banner" that fit the idea of a snowflake so I hand drew a snowflake swirl. I drew it so that when the card is closed the two ends of the swirls align but when you fully open the card you can see it exends across the entire card. I didn't have a Christmas greeting stamp that I could make work with the so I used some peel off stickers to add the greeting. I also used a peel off sticker that was sticky on both sides for the centre of the snowflake and added some silver glitter.

Then a little Wink of Stella on the "snow swirl" to finish it off.