Hello crafty friends. We’ve got a new theme at Alphabet Challenge and it was my turn to choose it this time! We’re up to the letter P and I opted for ‘precious’. I thought this worked from two angles on this card – the Christ child is so precious for Christians around the world and I also used gold heat embossing on my image (gold being a precious metal). I’ve also picked up three elements from the TicTacToe grid at The Paper Players, taking the left hand diagonal of metallic, texture & stitching.

The first step was to stamp the image from Stampin’ Up!’s ‘hope and peace’ set onto white card, using WOW’s clear embossing ink. I then heat embossed it with their ‘metallic gold’ powder.

I cut a square of white card to fit a 5×5 card blank and cut an aperture into it using one of SU’s ‘tasteful labels’ dies. I then ran it through the ‘bricks & mortar’ embossing folder, onto which I’d rubbed ‘weeathered wood’ Distress Oxide. While the ink was still wet, I blended it a little more evenly across the card using a brush. Once dry, I attached the nativity image behind the aperture using foam tape, and then onto the card front.

The aperture was slightly wider than the embossed image, so I ran a little more of the ‘weathered wood’ ink around the embossing using a waterbrush, so the small gap blended in. I stamped the sentiment from SU’s retired ‘stars are shining’ set and heat embossed it with the gold powder, before die cutting with another of the ‘tasteful label’ dies (which helpfully has a stitched edge!)

I like the effect of looking through a window to the nativity scene. So how will you interpret our theme of ‘precious’? Come on over to Alphabet Challenge to check out the inspiration from the rest of the design team and then come and join in! You’ve got until Thursday 17th November to share your precious creations – we’d love to see them.