Playing with Christmas ideas

I spent some time playing around with various ideas and products with a friend over the weekend.  When I do this I tend to venture beyond my stock of Stampin' Up products and on this occasion I decided to see what I could do with some shimmer paper I have had in my cupboard for ages.

These cards are using the same basic technique and layout as in the Holiday Catalogue using the stamp set Joyous Celebrations.  The shimmer paper embossed beautifully and I was delighted with the results.

More to come from this play session as we ran lots of card and paper through the Big Shot using the Snow Flurry die.  I just have to get some cards made now.

Playing with Evergreen

I have spent quite a bit of time playing with one of the new stamp sets from the Holiday Catalougue called Evergreen.

This stamp set has a series of Christmas trees including a solid image, an outline image and an image that uses the words from Silent Night.

These are two of a series of cards I have made so far.  The first is a 'Z fold' card and I have used a combination of Old Olive card stock and the new Be of Good Cheer Designer Series Paper.  The tree on the front uses Old Olive ink for the background image and I have embossed the outline image with white embossing powder.  The image on the inside of the card is the one using the words from 'Silent Night'.


The second card uses Real Red, Whisper White and Basic Black card stock as well as a piece of acetate overlay.  I have stamped the outline image of the tree as a background and sparkled it up with Dazzling Diamonds.  I have then stamped the 'Silent Night' words onto the acetate with black StayzOn ink.  Lining the two trees up was a bit of a challenge but I was happy with the final result.

Using embossing folders

I decided the other day to google and see if I could find different ways to using the various embossing folders I own.  I found so many ideas to try that I was almost completely overwhelmed.  Here are my fist two finds.

The first is pressed embossing where I have punched circles of various sizes and stuck them onto a piece of Poppy Parade cardstock.  I have then run the whole piece through the Big Shot with the Square Lattice embossing folder and there you have it.  A bit of trim and a sentiment from Happiest Birthday Wishes and I had made a great card.




The second card is amazing.  I CASed it from an American demonstrator but then I couldn't find her name on my second search.  A similar card is also in the latest Mini catalogue.  This is so simple, first I punched out the shape in a piece of Whisper White cardstock.  Then, using small stamps (flowers, flourishes & circles in this case) I stamped around the edge of the punched hole.  Once it wass stamped, I sent it through the Big Shot in the Perfect Polka Dot embossing folder.  I then stamped the sentiment on the piece of punched out cardstock.  I put the embossed layer on the card using plenty of dimensionals and then put the sentiment on the card base through the window.

As I said, these are the first two cards of a list a mile long of new ideas I have found.  I will be making these cards at my August Stamp-A-Stack so keep an eye out for the date.