Welcome back to another week of Christmas Inspiration with the Art With Heart team.
I began this project this time last year, when I was inspired by a biscuit tin that perfectly matched a stamp set from last year’s holiday catalogue…totally trees. The colour scheme also matched our Stampin’ Up! colours (night of navy, pool party, Bermuda bay and whisper white) and I planned to make a card topper to attach to the middle of the lid, covering the words ‘Time for biscuits’.
I ate all the biscuits from the tin (the things we do for crafting!), washed it out, worked out all the measurements, and cut and punched 24 squares of card stock to make the 24 boxes.
Can you guess what happened next? Well, let’s just put it this way, maths never was my best subject! I realised I’d calculated incorrectly…only 15 of my 24 advent boxes fitted into the tin and the whole ‘advent calendar in a tin’ idea was a total flop!
For the past year my mistake has haunted me every time I opened my craft cupboard. I wanted to throw it into the bin but didn’t want to waste all that cardstock. So yesterday I decided it was time to work out how I could save this project.
Just because my boxes don’t fit into the biscuit tin they were designed to fit into doesn’t mean I couldn’t still use them as an advent calendar. I just had to think outside the square. For starters, I could display them on my cake stands.
These little boxes can be displayed either horizontally or vertically.
And they also look great all lined up on my square cake stand.
Heres’ the view from the side…it highlights the cute washi tape and the ribbon
I also popped them into a the lid of a white box I had and layered a sheet of window sheeting over the top, then tied it all up with a bow.
This project is a great way to use a variety of washi tapes, ribbons, silver thread, die cuts and embellishments. I think the more you mix it up, the better it looks.
So how do you make the little boxes? Trust me, you don’t want to follow my measurements, but there’s a great online tool called the ‘box buster’ that lets you type in the finished measurements you want for your box. It then gives you the measurements you need to make that size box. These photos below will give you an idea of how I constructed my boxes using my envelope punch board, paper snips and tear and tape.
Once you’ve constructed your boxes it’s simply a matter of folding and assembling them, filling them with sweets, toys or a little note, wrapping each box with washi tape or ribbon, decorating with all your coordinating embellishments, and numbering 1-24.
Some of the numbers I created using the large numbers die cuts and some were stamped using the labeller stamp set.
Well that’s another project I’m glad I didn’t throw into the bin when it didn’t work out the way I originally intended it to!
To see what the rest of our lovely Art With Heart Team have made hop on over to Claire’s blog.
I’ll be back with some embossing inspiration tomorrow night and them the following week is our last Heart of Christmas blog hop for the year!
Welcome to another week of Christmas inspiration with the Art with Heart team.
This week I’m playing with holly: holly paper, holly embossing folder, holly embellishments, and holly stamps, including a stamp set I hadn’t inked up yet.
I was really attracted to the Every Good Wish stamp set because I’ve got a soft spot for holly. It’s just so classic and timeless…and so very Christmassy.
Here’s my first card. I’ve used real red and garden green for all of my holly cards…it’s such a great colour combination, at once both classic and crisp.
Don’t you just love the texture the Holly textured impressions embossing folder gives to this card?
I love all of the stamps in the Every Good Wish stamp set and the inside sentiments are as lovely as the main images. I don’t usually ink up the inside of my cards but I just had to use these lovely sentiments to decorate the inside of my holly cards.
For my second card I made a variation of my first card, altering the colours and the orientation of the first card, and I also stamped a greeting on the inside of this one too. The gorgeous Quilted Christmas ribbon makes the perfect embellishment for this colour combination.
I was on a roll with my holly theme so I made 2 more cards…and I actually think these are my favourites! I used the same little holly stamp to make a wreath, this time mounting it onto holly DSP from the Quilted Christmas DSP.
My final card uses the holly embossing folder again, this time with a stamp from the Oh, What Fun stamp set, embellished with a holly stitched felt embellishment.
And here’s all my cards together! Which is your favourite?
To see what the rest of the team have made hop back to Claire’s blog and I’ll be back with some more Christmas inspiration next week.
Welcome to another week of Christmas inspiration with the Art with Heart team.
This week I’m playing with the new Stampin Blends and matching stamp set, Color Me Happy, which are available for sale from today. Instead of making one of the designs in the Colour Me Happy Kit (which by the way are all so beautiful) I decided to make a Christmas card using one of the bird stamps from the Colour Me Happy Stamp set.
I used four of the Stampin Blends pens: dark cherry cobbler, light cherry cobbler, dark pumpkin pie, and the colour lifter pen to shade my little Christmas bird. The colour lifter pen allows you to remove colour, giving your shading extra depth. Here’s a close-up of my little bird so you can see the shading.
I then cut out my stamped image with a square stitched shapes die and mounted it onto a scalloped square of cherry cobbler, die cut using the layering squares dies. The background DSP is from the wood textures DSP stack, mounted onto a card base made from crumb cake card stock.
Texture was added with some burlap ribbon, touches of nature elements and a sweet little bow made with linen thread. The sentiment is from the Santa’s Sleigh stamp set, punched out with the classic label punch.
To see what the rest of the team have made hop back to Claire’s blog and I’ll be back with some more Christmas inspiration next week.
Welcome back to the Heart of Christmas weekly blog.
This week I was lucky enough to borrow and have a play with 2 sets I don’t own from the Holiday catalogue: Beachy Little Christmas and Wise Men from Afar. I was inspired by the graphic palm tree in the Wide Men from Afar set to make some Aussie Christmas cards, but I actually ended up using a a whole lot of stamp sets to make 3 quite different cards.
My first card uses the beach hut from Beachy Little Christmas…a perfect card for my family as we live at the beach and all my boys surf. I mounted it to the card with some Stampin’ Dimensionals.
I paired my fussy cut beach hut (coloured in with the new Stampin Blends pens which are available in November) with the palm tree from Wise Men from Afar, and used my envelope punch board to make a matching envelope out of the Merry Little Christmas DSP.
My second card features the palm tree again, this time stamped with the High Tide set to create a beach scene.
The Adirondack chair is a super cute die from the seasonal layer thinlets and the little ornaments and present are cut using the Christmas Staircase thinlets.
The beautiful “enjoy the warmth of the season” sentiment is from the Hearts Come Home stamp set…just perfect for a summer Christmas!
Because I used a whisper white notecard to make this card the matching envelope was already made, so I simply decorated it with Washi tape and a label made using the Labels to Love stamp set and Everyday label punch.
My final card uses the tree stamp from “Beach Little Christmas” coloured in with my blender pens and the “enjoy the warmth of the season” sentiment from the Hearts Come Home stamp set. I love the colours of pool party and real red together so I’ve mounted my tree onto both pool party and real red card stock, with the final layer some of the gorgeous Naturally Eclectic DSP.
I took most of these photos in my garden as it seemed only right for these cards…so many of our Christmas celebrations occur outdoors in the glorious Sydney summer.
But my reindeers insisted on an indoor photo as well, although I think they might just be upstaged by my darling little chairs…such a bargain at 10 cents each at my local op shop!
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.
Product List (NOTE: stampin blends not available until November 1)
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.
Don’t you just love the texture the Holly textured impressions embossing folder gives to this card?
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.
