Welcome to my crafty blog. I’m back to Christmas cards today, this time with a commissioned card a friend wanted for her granddaughters. I saw the inspiration for this in a post on Pinterest, which I CASE’d (Copy And Selectively Edit, for the uninitiated!) I was really pleased with this finished card, which I think does have impact.

I started by embossing a panel of white card using the Stampin Up ‘snowfall’ thinlits dies. There are quite a few snowflake dies in the set, so I scattered them over the panel & then ran it through an embossing machine with a rubber shim under the card so the dies didn’t cut through. This is a great way to get more value out of your dies. Once embossed, I mounted the panel onto a wider piece of blue pearlescent paper and attached it to the front of an A5 card blank.

I then die cut the largest snowflake in the die set from the blue paper, together with the smallest poinsettias from the new ‘poinsettia’ dies set – two of them in white and the smallest in blue. I was given a tip recently about how to get deeper embossing when using die cuts, which is to spritz the card with water before die cutting it. It definitely worked on these poinsettias.

I then layered up the large snowflake, poinsettia bracts and a few more die cut leaves and berries to sit towards the top of the panel

Now as my friend wanted cards for her three granddaughters, I actually made the same card in three different colour ways, with the other two in copper and gold.

I finished the cards by stamping the ‘happy Christmas’ and ‘granddaughter’ sentiments from two of the Claritystamp sets that are in Barbara Gray’s handwriting. It is great having sentiments that are all in the same font, so I can mix and match them. I die cut banner shapes from spare white card, and then stamped and used WOW powder to heat emboss them to co-ordinate with the accent colour for each card.

Thanks for dropping in. I’ve still got a lot more Christmas cards to make, so there’ll be more to come over the next few weeks!