shepherds’ window

Welcome to my crafty blog and a Christmas card using one of my favourite ClarityCrafts die – the ‘shepherds’ window’. I love this traditional stained glass effect and have combined paper piecing, glitter & mica powders on this one. I based the layout on the sketch at The Paper Players with the colours from Hand Stamped Sentiments and included the ‘glitter’ theme from TGIF challenges (well it is a Christmas card!)

I started with a piece of card that I’d trimmed to fit a 7×7 card blank and cut the window die into the top part of it. I fixed a piece of Clarity’s double sided adhesive behind the die cut, leaving the yellow waxy backing paper in place – this stuff is super sticky, so you only get one shot at getting it in the right place! I used an offcut of brown card to recut the shepherds from the die and paper pieced them onto the card, then used a fine paintbrush to add white Perfect Pearl mica powder to the star. The powder sticks easily to the adhesive sheet, you just have to be careful not to stray into the other parts of the die cut.

I then used copper Perfect Pearls powder to fill in the window frame. I popped the white cover sheet (that I’d taken off the adhesive to start with) back onto the front of the card, then turned it over so I could put a piece of dark blue on the reverse – if you don’t do that, the adhesive sheet will stick to whatever is underneath your card (probably not the effect you’ll want!) Turning the card back over, I rubbed ‘hint of blue’ Pergaglitter onto the front of the card to cover the adhesive over the blue background.

The double sided adhesive didn’t cover the full width of my card, so I added strips down each side and them attached it to a layer of copper card and onto a 7×7 card blank. I repeat stamped the sentiment from the ‘Christmas & Celebration’ words sticker stamp set onto a strip of white card using ‘cobaly’ Archival ink, trimmed it down to the width of the sentiments & attached it to the card front.

This is not a design for batch-making lots of cards at speed, but it was well worth taking the effort as I love the shimmer and sparkle on it. Here’s a close-up with a better view.

18 thoughts on “shepherds’ window”

  2. Wow, Deborah, this is truly glorious! What a process – it SO paid off! What a fabulous take on our colors! Thanks so much for playing at Hand Stamped Sentiments!

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  5. Not only is this a beautiful card evoking the true meaning of Christmas, it’s got great “wow” factor as well! All the details come together to make a beauty of a card! Thanks for playing with my sketch this week at the Players!

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  6. Wow this is stunning! I love all the detail and hard work you put into this card! Absolutely gorgeous! Such a clever and unique way to use the colors. Thanks for joining the hand stamped sentiments challenge!

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