Mix It Up Monday: Year of Cheer DSP gets the Fresh Fig treatment

How are your Christmas preparations coming along? At the time of writing I have written SIX cards... and they aren’t even the ones heading across the Pond, so I really must get my act together. 

I’m still making Christmas projects though, and this one uses a surprising colour combination from my In Color charts for today’s Mix It Up Monday post. 

I began by sponging Fresh Fig ink onto some Year of Cheer Designer Series Paper. I have fallen in love with this paper all over again since discovering the possibilities by adding some colour. The gold and silver snowflakes really pop out of the rich background. 

I die-cut a huge pile of Very Vanilla trees but then the card went off in a different direction so they will have to wait for another day, as only these two made the final cut. I didn’t really want to add the so Saffron but rules are rules and the colour combination demanded it, so I added a greeting flag and topped it with a silver rhinestone, coloured “gold” with a Daffodil Delight Stampin’ Blends marker. 

Log slice ornaments with Carols of Christmas

I didn’t make swaps for OnStage this year, but made these gifts for my team members who attended. I kind of guessed they’d be popular so planned a class around them so you too can join in the fun!

Come along and find out how to make the Mini Pizza Boxes turn green and much more...

Carols of Christmas gets the Lemon Lime Twist touch

I LOVE Lemon Lime Twist and think it looks great against the starkness of Whisper White and Basic Black. Here’s a project using the trees from the Card Front Builder dies set; all I did was die-cut the trees from a Whisper White panel and offset them to reveal the Lemon Lime Twist beneath. No waste and you get four trees from one roll of the die. 

On the same colour theme, I created a 3D package, designed to hold a roll of ribbon. This time I did die-cut two sets of trees; one in white, one in black. The cunning trick here is the border; if you look closely you can see the join where the two sections of the border die meet. This is a bit hit and miss and I have to confess this isn’t my best effort. If you’re particularly fussy, you could cover the join with some ribbon or other embellishment. 

The inside of the package was created with a pocket made from Merry Music Designer Series Paper; it may seem extravagant but it’s thinner than our usual paper so perfect for the job and also you get 24 sheets in a pack, so plenty to go round! And I like that it subtly adds interest to the project, like the fancy lining of an expensive jacket.

Carols of Christmas projects

There are some gorgeous products in the Autumn/Winter catalogue this year, and these lovely cards showcase just a couple of them, including the Carols of Christmas bundle and the Merry Music Designer Series Paper. One of the great things about the paper is that you get 24 sheets in a pack, which means you’ll have plenty for ALL your Christmas projects!

This was one of the projects from my All-Day Autumn Craftathon recently – there are two designs so people can choose how to use the products themselves. Love the splash of copper!

Hearts Come Home illuminated card

After lunch at Saturday’s workshop, we went straight into Christmas mode, with this stunning festive scene made from the Hearts Come Home bundle.

It’s really quite simple... take half a sheet of cardstock, cut lengthways and scored at the centre point. Cut 5in off and attach vellum to replace the missing front.

Take the 5in piece and score at 1in intervals to create the zig-zag piece at the front, to mount those beautiful houses.

And the beauty of this card is that you can light it from behind using a battery tealight...

Forest scene with Card Front Builder Dies

This card was inspired by our summer holiday in Scotland, so features:

• Wooden boards - made with the Pinewood Planks embossing folder)
• A little red house in the woods - made with the Hometown Greetings Edgelits 
• Lots of Scots pine trees - Card Front Builder Dies, with each tree hand trimmed to expose the long trunks
• A shy deer - Cart Front Builder dies again.

Two of the main products I used are from the Autumn/Winter catalogue and are actually Christmas products... but don’t let that stop you; as I’ve shown here, they are suitable for year-round use, especially when trying to recreate the Abernethy Forest in paper form!

Carols of Christmas - one design, two cards

At last week’s Crafty Friday event, we made a fancy fold card to this design, then scaled things back by making a much simpler card along the same lines.

The one on the right folds out and is held together with a belly band, and is ideal for a “special card”, while the one on the left is a bog standard card design, much more suited to making multiples for most people on your Christmas mailing list.

For the measurements for the fancy fold card, please go to this link. 

It was fun to get the glitter and gold glimmer paper out on a warm August day, and we had lots of fun using the new Carols of Christmas bundle, which is available to purchase ahead of its official release next month.

Mix It Up Monday: Tranquil Tide with Vintage Leaves

Tranquil Tide goes brilliantly with copper, so I placed some Copper Foil behind this die-cut piece to create a contrasting border for this Mix It Up Monday project. 

The dies are in the new Card Front Builder set, which is an Autumn/Winter catalogue product available a month early. It’s part of the festive Carols of Christmas bundle but there’s not reason you can’t use it all year round. 

What I like about the border stamps is that it only die-cuts one end, so you cut one end and then run it through the Big Shot again to cut the other. This means it fits our card sizes in the UK as well as those in the US, which are proportioned slightly differently. 

For autumn (which I’m afraid to say is looming large), there’s no finer stamp set than Vintage Leaves and this is a pretty good colour combo, too, if I say so myself. It comes from my In Color charts, which feature 50 colour combos using the latest In Colors. 

I sponged the top image in Cajun Craze and Early Espresso onto Very Vanilla, with leaves die-cut from the two colours of cardstock in the background. That’s it, quite a simple card, topped off with a greeting from Better Together (a must-have, in my opinion). 

Carols of Christmas bundle with Wood Textures DSP

I think this Wood Textures DSP is the perfect accompaniment for this new stamp set, Carols of Christmas. I do think I should have cut the DSP smaller but, by the time I realised this, I was too far down the line, so we are left with a too-slim border of Crumb Cake.

Still, lovely versatile stamp set and lots to play with in the accompanying Card Front Builder dies, too.

Mix It Up Monday: Carols of Christmas sneak peek

Hello Monday… and goodbye July. Today is the last day to take advantage of the best sign-up offer I’ve ever seen. Join today and you’ll get this stamp set free, as well as a fabulous pack of vital craft tools to add to you stash. 

It’s also the last day to earn a Bonus Days coupon to spend in August – spend £45 today and get a £4.50 voucher to spend next month. 

But most of all, it’s Monday, and time for another project using a colour combination from my In Color charts. Today’s Mix It Up Monday project is a CASE of this gorgeous project by Holly Stene. Unfortunately I didn’t have any suitable ribbon so my version is a little plainer. 

It uses the new Carols of Christmas stamp set and co-ordinating Card Front Builder dies, which will be in the upcoming Autumn/Winter catalogue (goes live in September) but you can purchase from tomorrow. There are lots of possibilities with this set and I look forward to showing you more projects… when I get time to make some!

The colour combination uses a splash of Lemon Lime Twist, which is a favourite of mine but even I had to admit that it probably wasn’t appropriate on this particular Christmas card, so I kept it as subtle as possible. 

For the trees, I stamped them lightly in Whisper White using Timeless Textures, then embossed with white embossing powder to create a frosted look. I don’t know what’s got into my lately... I don’t usually emboss anything and now I can’t seem to stop!

Mix It Up Monday: Card Front Builder dies - sneak peek

It’s Monday again and time for another project using a colour combination from my In Color charts. And once again I’m using Powder Pink – admittedly to make up for lost time because I could see that this colour was lagging behind as I worked with the In Colors I found more appealing. 

But, even if I’m not a fan of baby pink, I get that others are, so I forced myself out of my comfort zone again for this Mix It Up Monday project.

It uses the brand new Card Front Builder dies, which will be feature in the Autumn/Winter catalogue in September. But it gets better than that, because they will be available to buy from 1st August, along with a co-ordinating stamp set called Carols of Christmas (I confess I haven’t used mine yet!).

But I was keen to get playing with my new goodies, even if Christmas wasn’t on the menu – so I made these thank you cards for my club members. I couldn’t find a ‘thank you’ stamp to fit the banner, but thought ‘special delivery’ worked just as well, as they were receiving the special delivery of their July orders. 

Any idea how I made the banner? Scroll down for the answer. 

I had a bit of a drama while making these projects. After die-cutting an oval mask and stamping Hardwood onto the Very Vanilla cardstock (stamping off to get a paler shade of Chocolate Chip), I had just finished 15 pieces and cleaned away the relevant supplies when disaster struck and I knocked a glass of water over. The air was blue, I can tell you!

Fortunately only four were damaged, so I finished them off, in a VERY bad mood. Lesson learned though!

(As for the banner, it's one of the ‘stripes’ from the hot air balloon in the Up & Away Thinlits set.)