Festive Friday - Brand Ambassador Inspiration

Good morning all, Julie here with another Festive Friday post featuring three cards on the same colour theme.

I'm still determined to get ahead with my Christmas makes in the hope that I wont need to be in a rush later in the year and this month I've been inspired by the colours over at CAS Christmas, so why don't you grab yourself a cuppa, sit back and check out these makes.

This first card uses the Christmas Pop trees as well as BB Falling Snow and a freebie snow stencil from a magazine. 

The two Christmas Pop trees were stamped and heat embossed with white EP before trimming down and edging them with red ink. The third snowflake one was made by tracing the shape of one of the others, cutting out from kraft card, then stamping with BB Falling Snow and embossing in white EP. On a scrap panel of kraft, I stenciled the snow using some Ranger Texture paste over the top 2/3rds and when dry added the strip of red, white and kraft coloured DP to the bottom. Arranging the trees over the DP, the finished panel was popped up on pads over a kraft base card, a trio of red gems complete. 

You can't get much simpler than this one layer card. Festive Sentiments Outlined and a holly sprig from Framed - Holly, stamped and embossed in white EP, 3 tiny red crystals for the red berries all on an A6 kraft base card. You could use any large sentiment here, such as Festive Sentiments, or even stamp it in black. A great design for mass production?

I've used Background Builders Christmas 2018 before to make a plaid pattern before, here and here. This time I've used a panel of kraft card, red ink, a white gel pen and a black fine liner to make a panel to cut my letters from. The kraft is obviously darker and very absorbent so the red is not as bright as it would be on white, but using my Misti I was able to go back a couple of times to deepen the colour.

You can see that I made a couple of mistakes with the stamping and line drawing but there was still enough left for me to cut out all the letters I needed, waste not want not!

The Wishing You is from Festive Sentiments and Christmas from Most wonderful were stamped onto the off white base card in black before the die cut merry was added on matching red foam letters.

So that's all from me for the moment, hope I've given you some ideas to get your Christmas stash rolling!

Stay safe and keep crafting 'til next time.

Festive Friday - Get more from your sentiments, some BA Inspiration

 Good morning, hope you are well and keeping safe and sane! Julie here with a little bit of Festive BA Fun this Friday. 

I have made a resolution to make Christmas cards all through the year, so that I'm not rushing around at the end of November making them like I was last year! Hopefully I won't have as much time on my hands this year, meeting up with friends and relatives will be at the top of my agenda, so I need to use this 'free' time to get ahead. So far I've made four!

So for my first Festive Friday post, I am concentrating on SENTIMENTS. Yup those little stamps that come with the more interesting stamp sets or the fab sentiments sets such as Festive Sentiments and Most Wonderful. 

Another resolution I made towards the end of last year was to use up my scraps and backgrounds that I have accumulated and it was after rummaging through these, that I got the idea for my theme for this post.

My first card uses a LOT of sentiments that I got together from my Uniko sets, some old and some new, some current, others sadly retired. I made them way back in 2019 but didn't use them all and in the spirit of waste not want not, here is my card design.

To make the panels, I started by laying an A5 panel of card in my MISTI, then arranged the stamps to cover the whole area. When satisfied with the arrangement I closed the MISTI door and inked up the stamps with Versamark and then stamped on to the card panel, added clear EP and heat embossed. I didn't remove the stamps and used a selection of different coloured card in festive colours to create multiple backgrounds which I can use later. A selection of little stamps were used to fill in any gaps too small for a sentiment.

For this card I took a bright red stamped panel and added it to an A6 card base, trimming off any overhang. The snowy landscape was cut twice using a Marianne die and added to the bottom of the card and excess trimmed away. A little Wink of Stella adds a bit of sparkle. No need for a sentiment as they are there in the background!

Here are a couple more ideas using the same technique that I made with the first of my panels, you may recognise them. 

   

Just click the image if you want to find out more.

Of course sentiments aren't just for Christmas, you can use any of your sentiments to create a background!

Keeping up the theme of making sentiments center stage, here is my second card. 

This uses a few sentiments in different fonts and sizes that I stamped onto card, heat embossed with fine white EP and trimmed down. The colour of the strips were chosen to match my backing which I stamped using Background Blocks Falling Snowflakes and the separate snowflake stamps from Snowflake Serenade in non traditional colours. I used a die cut funky Christmas tree as a template to create the centerpiece, adding each trimmed down strip starting from the bottom. A star punched from holographic card and a holographic gem on the red pot complete. The completed panel was then added to a red A6 note card. 

Here is the same idea from 2019 using a more traditional colourway.

So that's about it from me for today. I hope I've given you a few ideas for using those very useful sentiment stamps.

Stay safe and keep crafting!