Welcome to my crafty blog! I do love mixing old and new stamps & dies, and today’s card does that perfectly. It’s the perfect time of year for a cup of hot chocolate, and I couldn’t resist the photo at Inspired by, deciding to give it a bit of a contemporary twist with the colours at Color Throwdown

I started with a 5×5 card blank and created a frame with one of Clarity’s embedders. It’s easy to do – you just attached the plastic embedder shape to the front of the card with low tack tape, flip it open and run an embossing tool or a bone folder around the edge of the plastic from the inside of the card. I stamped ‘chocolate’ from Stampin’ Up!’s ‘nothing’s better than’ set and the ‘feeling better’ sentiment from the new ‘beautifully happy’ set available in the Saleabration, using ‘shadow grey’ Archival ink.

I die cut one of the coffe cups from the retired SU ‘coffee cafe’ set (one of the first I ever bought), suign grey for the cup and black for the cupholder. I stamped the whipped cream image using the ‘shadow grey’, die cut it and then covered it with the fab SU ‘snowfall accents’ puff paint. When you dry it with a heat gun, it puffs up and resulted in a great effect for the cream. All three pieces were glued together then popped onto the card front.

I cut some little hearts in a magenta pink card and added a few to the coffee cup, scattering the others on the card front.

I love the little pops of pink! I’ve got a few friends who are under the weather at the moment, so hopefully a cup of hot chocolate & whipped cream will make them feel a bit brighter.