Welcome back to the Heart of Christmas weekly blog.
This week I had such a short window of time to make my cards and luckily Merry Little Christmas Memories & More Card Pack came to the rescue. That’s right, Memories and More Cards are not just for scrapbooking…they also make very quick and easy cards.
I’m almost embarrassed to say how easy it was to make these cards. You see there’s no stamping, colouring, punching or die cutting, which is exactly what I needed when I was so short on time. In fact they were so easy too make I ended up making 4 cards in under 1/2 hour…here they are!
I made card bases using whisper white and then it was simply a case of layering up the Merry Little Christmas Memories & More Cards with ribbons, embelishments and wash tape…super easy!
The joy card is embellished with the gorgeous Cherry Cobbler 1/4″ Double-Stitched Ribbon and a clear facetted gem.
Merry and Bright uses silver foil, Merry Music Specialty DSP, Pick A Pattern Washi Tape, and Basic Black 3/8″ Shimmer Ribbon.
Ho Ho Ho features gold foil, burlap ribbon, and Gold 1/8″ (3.2 Mm) Ribbon and jute twine tied together into a bow.
And Holly Jolly is mounted on some lemon lime twist card stock and decorated with Lemon Lime Twist 1/4″ Ombre Ribbon tied into a little bow, and the matching stickers that come in the Merry Little Christmas Memories & More Card Pack (mounted with a Stampin’ Dimensional!).
The Holiday catalogue really doesn’t do this set justice, you get so many cards in the set! And there are some gorgeous acetate cards with silver that I will use in a later blog to show you just hoe beautiful they are. Of course some of the cards are really only suitable for scrapbooking or bullet journaling, but many of them are also perfect for cards.
I’m going to make a stack more cards with this set because they are so quick and easy to make.
You can go back to Claire’s blog to see what the rest of our team have made this week.
And I’ll be back next week with some more Heart of Christmas inspiration.
Welcome back to the Heart of Christmas weekly blog.
Have you ever had what I call a “happy accident” while crafting?
Well on Monday (a public holiday here in NSW where I live) I had some unexpected craft time to myself and I was having another play with the gorgeous new Merry Patterns stamp set when I had my happy accident. I began my card by stamping the 2 deer stamps in whisper white onto the Wood Textures Double Sided Paper (on sale at the moment if you want to stock up) but I was unsure just how to embellish this card so I set it aside and began to use the Marry Patterns stamp set to make another card.
I was actually now making a birthday card with the Merry Patterns stamp set (I’ll do a post about this card later this week) and in the process of using the Happy Birthday die.
While I was cleaning up the offcuts from the Happy Birthday I realised that one section of these paper offcuts would make the most perfect reindeer antlers!
If you’d like to make some antlers yourself you need to just die cut the top right section of “happy”. You need the off cut that falls between the top of the p and the y and underneath the swirl…does that make sense? Here’s a photo that hopefully makes it much clearer. Can you see the antler shape now?
Because I used the gold glimmer paper for the antler I had to cut the other side of the antler on the reverse side of the paper, however if you’re not using glimmer paper or foil and just cutting out of card stock you won’t need to do this as card stock is exactly the same on both sides.
To finish off this card I attached some burlap and cut up a foil snowflake, but I used the reverse side, rather than the foil side. Did you realise you can also use this reverse side to colour the snowflake any colour you want?
The final touches to my card were to make a bow out of the gold sequin ribbon, and I used 2 of the sequins pulled off this ribbon to make eyes for my reindeer,
The sentiment is also from the Merry Patterns set, stamped in whisper white onto early espresso card stock and punched out with the classic label punch.
I’m so happy with this happy accident and my little reindeer with his sparkly antlers…and so are my little ceramic reindeer it seems!
I’ll be back in the next couple of days to show you the card I made using the happy birthday die (it also involves using a product in an unusual way) but in the meantime you can go back to Claire’s blog to see what the rest of our team have made this week.
And you can click on any of the links below to purchase the products I’ve used for today’s card.SaveSave
Welcome back to the Heart of Christmas weekly blog.
This week I had a play with a gorgeous new free Stampin’ Up! hostess set called Merry Patterns. Merry Patterns features the cutest reindeer in its very own knitted jacket. It’s no secret that I adore reindeer and just take a look at this beauty!
There are so many cute stamps in this stamp set but I only used 3 of them here…the pine branch is so lovely and the Merry Christmas sentiment is the perfect size for the modern label punch.
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I’m going to make some more cards with this set to share with you in the coming weeks because this is such a versatile set. Here are all the stamps you get in this set:
What I love about this set is that you don’t need a big shot to make stunning cards…the images are just lovely on their own, which makes for quick, easy and inexpensive cards. My kind of cards.
I also think I’ve found a new favourite colour combination while making this card: crumb cake and smoky slate. Don’t you just love this combo?
Originally I mounted the stamped image straight onto the crumb cake layer (see the pic below) but them I went back and added a layer of smoky slate between. I really like both versions.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my Merry Patterns card today and I’ll be back soon with some more cards made from this lovely set.
My last photo is a bit dark but I had to include this shot with my reindeer because I made a reindeer card this week and they haven’t appeared on my blog for a couple of weeks!
To see what the other members of the Art with Heart team have made for you today, please go back to the very talented Claire Daly’s blog.
And to purchase any of the products I’ve used you can click on the links below.
PLEASE NOTE: Merry Patterns cannot be purchased…it is a free hostess stamp set you can earn simply by hosting a qualifying party…contact me to find out more.
Welcome back to the Heart of Christmas weekly blog.
After seeing so many beautiful eclipse cards posted on social media I decided to hop on the bandwagon as well. My “deck the halls eclipse card” was CASED from one I saw on Pinterest, however the card that inspired me wasn’t watermarked and it didn’t link to a blog so I have no idea who to attribute the original idea to!
What I loved about the eclipse card I CASED was that it took one word from a Christmas sentiment and used the eclipse technique to create that word, then the rest of the sentiment was stamped. To do this on this first card I used my real red marker to only mark up the section of the Deck the Halls stamp I wanted to use, stamping with lemon lime twist and real red for the rest of the card.
Anyway, here are the two cards I made, inspired by an anonymous stranger on Pinterest!
If you’ve never made an eclipse card before, you simply die cut your word with the large letter dies, but before you remove your die cut letters you stamp over them. When you’re done you lift up the letters and then adhere them with dimensionals so you can see the shadow of the coloured card stock below. I just love the dimension this technique adds to the card.
On my first card I stamped and die cut some extra baubles from the Carols of Christmas Stamp set and adhered them on top of the eclipse letters for added dimension. A tiny bow made out of the red tinsel trim completes the card.
For my second card I went for a cooler palette, using pool party, Bermuda bay and smoky slate ink. I used the same technique I described for the first card, this time making the word joy with the large letter dies and using the Hearts Come Home stamp set.
To complete my second card I made a bow with the silver thread and adhered it to my card with a clear facetted gem.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my eclipse cards today and I’ll be back tomorrow with a fancy fold card for you.
To see what the other members of the Art with Heart team have made for you today, please go back to the very talented Claire Daly’s blog.
And to purchase any of the products I’ve used you can click on the links below.
Hello fellow crafters, it’s time for some weekly “Heart of Christmas” Christmas card inspiration with the Art with Heart Team.
This week I decided to ink up a set from the new holiday catalogue called Wishes All Aglow.
I really love this stamp set because it’s playful and fun and I love stamps with images of Christmas lights and really any stamps with lights in general.
I took my inspiration from the holiday catalogue and here’s what they did with this set.
For my first card I decided to CASE the fussy cut “ho ho ho” but keep my card to a tighter colour scheme of very vanilla, white and gold. I also decorated a matching envelope to go with the card. The fussy cut stamp is mounted on a gold foil snowflake, which in turn is mounted on some of the Year of Cheer DSP.
For my second card I kept to the gold vanilla and white theme but inked up different stamps from this set. I also used some of the Year of cheer washi tape and again decorated a matching envelope.
Finally I inked up the jingle stamp from the set and instead of making another card I decided to make a quick and easy treat bag to go with the cards, using the gold striped treat bags. I also used the leftover part of my foil snowflake from the card I made last week to decorate the bag. These foil snowflakes are so easy to cut up to use in different ways.
I used versamark ink, gold embossing power and my heat tool to achieve the gold stamped images and I love how the gold ties in the Wishes All Aglow Set with the beautiful products from the Year of Cheer suite.
To see the lovely projects the other members of the team have made this week hop back to Tina Gillespie’s blog.
To get your free copy of the new holiday catalogue, contact me here.
Or to purchase any of the products I’ve used in my cards, click on the links below.
Thanks for stopping by and I’ll be back with more holiday inspiration next week.
The Holiday catalogue is finally here and it’s full of absolutely stunning products!
You can look inside the catalogue right now by going to the Catalogue page of the Stampin’ Up! website and download this pdf version for free! Or you can contact me and I’ll send you out your very own print copy. If you’d like to purchase any of the products in the catalogue you can do so by visiting my online shop here.
I’ll be back tomorrow morning with some cards made from the new catalogue or checkout my blog page or some sneak peeks of cards I’ve already made using some of the new product.
Hello fellow crafters, it’s time for some weekly “Heart of Christmas” Christmas card inspiration with the Art with Heart Team.
This week I nearly threw my cards in the bin.
You see I was trying to make a style of card called scandi style or motif, a style I absolutely love but have never made before. A style I thought I needed to get my stamping 100% accurate for it to work.
To make a scandi/motif card you begin by marking the centre point of your card with a pencil and drawing intersecting lines out from this point. After that, it’s very simple. You stamp an image in the centre of the card and then stamp outwards using a variety of stamps and colours, following the lines you’ve drawn and trying to keep everything geometrical and balanced. And when you’re done you rub out your pencil guidelines.
Can you guess which stamp sets I used to make the designs below?
I really love this mix of colours and stamps but if you look closely at the images above you’ll see my designs are not 100% lined up. In fact, some of them are way out! This is a close up of all of my cards with all their imperfections!
I was quite upset about this but when I showed my mum she begged me not to throw my attempts in the bin, reassuring me they still worked. So yesterday I decided to take her advice. I trimmed down around my stamping, mounted the designs onto matching card stock and added some embellishments.
Adding some dimension really helped lift the cards and distract from their imperfections, and his is how they look now.
For my first card I added one of the new stitched felt embellishments in the centre, as well as enamel shapes stars in pool party and real red.
On my second card I added an itty bitty bow in lemon lime twist and real red enamel dots.
Finally, for my third card I went a little crazy with the bling. I cut pieces of one of the new foil snowflakes and adhered these to the card with a facetted gem. Metallic gold shapes completed the card.
I’m really glad I listened to my mum and didn’t throw my stamping in the bin. But most importantly I decided to share these cards here to show you that even with a geometric pattern your stamping doesn’t always have to be perfect to make a lovely card.
This style of stamping really lets you get a lot of bang for your buck with your stamp sets. You can mix old and new, big and small, and I reckon this would look lovely in just 2 colours as well.
So I’m going to head back to the drawing board now and practice getting neater with this style of cardmaking…and of course, always remember to listen to my mum!
Thank’s for stopping by today. If you go to Claire Daly’s blog you’ll be able to hop to all of the other Art With Heart team members and see the beautiful Christmas creations they’ve shared with you this week.
Tonight some of the Art with Heart Stampin’ Up! team girls are sharing some fun and fabulous ideas to inspire you from our brand new Holiday Catalogue available on 1st September until 2nd January 2018. Be sure to request your copy of the catalogue today!
There are so many fantastic products in the new holiday catalogue it made it very had to choose which one to use, so I decided to use products from 3 different sets on my card this week.
The most obvious product on this card is the stunning Hometown Greeting Edgelits Dies. I’ve used my big shot to cut them out from whisper white, smoky grey and night of navy card stock. Every time I use this set of framelits I notice another tiny little detail, such as the bell in the church tower, the handle on the doors and the teeny tiny top hat on the little snowman…it’s just all too cute for words!
I knew I wanted a sentiment to add dimension to my card so I decided to use the new everyday label punch to cut out some night of navy card stock. But the most exciting part of making this card came about when I was deciding which sentiment to use with the everyday label punch.
Quite by accident I discovered that my absolute favourite sentiment from the entire catalogue (the Merry Christmas stamp in the Snowflake Sentiments stamp set) fits perfectly into the Everyday Label Punch. In fact it fits so perfectly it looks as if they are from the same bundle and designed to be used together.
Once I recovered from my excitement I just had enough time to cover the whisper white ink while it was still wet with white embossing powder and heat emboss it with my heat tool to further emphasise the beautiful font of this stamp.
The final touch for this card was little bit of bling. I used a strip of 1/8 inch silver ribbon at the bottom of the card and added a bow under the label punch. And then I stamped the moon from the Hearts Come Home stamp set (part of the Hearts Come Home bundle with the Hometown Greetings Edgelits) and sprinkled it with some silver Stampin glitter.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my holiday catalogue inspiration today. Make sure you also check our what the other ladies in our Art with Heart blog hop have made from the holiday catalogue.
If you find a broken link or have come to this blog hop from a different entry point, you can view the participants below:
Welcome back to Week 13 of our weekly Heart of Christmas blog.
Although I missed week 1, I’m determined to try to post a Christmas card or project every week until Christmas. I really love making Christmas cards and being part of this weekly blog with the Art with Heart Team is a great excuse to make Christmas cards year round. It also means I end up being super organised with my cards by the time December comes around… a win/win!
This week I wanted to make a simple card that would “hero” the gorgeous new lamppost die. This die reminds me of my one and only white Christmas in 1989, which I spend in Edinburgh (where my father’s family comes from) after a month’s holiday in the UK. It was such a special time and I loved having a white Christmas in that magical city.
The Brightly Lit Christmas bundle comes with a variety of lamps and they look great angled up or down, used singularly, or with 2 or 3 lampshades. There’s also the option of a hanging banner or sign that hangs off an arm off the lamppost (the matching stamp set has signs that fit perfectly into these banners). I’ve cut out all the dies below and photographed them beside the Brightly Lit Christmas stamp set so you can see just how many pieces you get in this bundle, how they co-ordinate together, and how versatile it is!
The perfect background for this lamppost is the softly falling embossing folder. I must admit I often forget to use my embossing folders but when I do remember to use them I just love the texture and dimension they add to my cards.
I’ve used some of the new beautiful 1/8 inch real red ribbon to attach one of the darling little boxwood wreaths to the lamppost. I actually cut the wreath in half with my scissors to make it the right dimension for this card.
Finally, to finish the card off I thought the “Merry & Bright” sentiment from the new Hearts Come Home stamp set was just the perfect match for a lamppost. If you love the Hearts Come Home bundle as much as I do take a look at my blog tomorrow as I’ll be sharing another card that features this beautiful bundle.
I love this classic and neutral colour combination of black and white because I think it really makes the green wreath and red ribbon pop. And my little reindeer just loves his fancy pom pom decorations for this week’s blog!
To see what the rest of the team have made, visit Claire’s blog here. I’ll be back with more Christmas card inspiration next week.
Product List (I can’t include a link here to the Brightly Lit bundle, the real red ribbon or the Hearts Come Home stamp set because these are not available for purchase until September 1)
Because I used the gold glimmer paper for the antler I had to cut the other side of the antler on the reverse side of the paper, however if you’re not using glimmer paper or foil and just cutting out of card stock you won’t need to do this as card stock is exactly the same on both sides.
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If you’ve never made an eclipse card before, you simply die cut your word with the large letter dies, but before you remove your die cut letters you stamp over them. When you’re done you lift up the letters and then adhere them with dimensionals so you can see the shadow of the coloured card stock below. I just love the dimension this technique adds to the card.
