Hi there!

I have been doing pretty well recently at creating.  Today however I hit a bit of a block and when I sat down at my craft desk, nothing happened for a while.  I have very limited free time to craft and have to make the most of every minute, so I had a look at some challenge blogs to see if I could get inspired.  Because I am trying to focus on building my Christmas stash at the moment, I took a look at the Muse Christmas Visions challenge where I found this fabulous card by Kimberley Wiener of Wienerhoneymooners:

I was inspired by the circular element, the monochromatic colour scheme and the embossing.

I decided to use the Cheers to the Year stamp set again.  I think this set really lends itself to clean and simple cards because of the elegance of the images and sentiments.  Check out my other post using this set here.

For each card I have tried to stick to the formula: 1 stamp set -2 colours – 3 elements

For this card I created a band of white embossed small snowflakes by using post-its to mask off the rest of the card.  I repeatedly stamped the image in Versamark ink then covered in white embossing powder before heating.  In order to make sure that the white on white didn’t get lost, I used silver washi to border each edge.  For the main embellishment I stamped the larger snowflake onto a circular die cut and embossed this in silver.  I was so pleased at how crisp and detailed the image turned out!  I added this to a vellum die cut and adhered this above the small snowflake band.  In the set, the sentiment is on two lines but I needed it to be on one line so that I had an element to add some width to the card.  I stamped the word “greeting” first due to this being the taller word (the g’s and the t adding height).  To do this, I masked off the word “season’s” with a post-it and inked up the part I needed.  It was really important that I made sure the stamp was super clean before I continued and used the same process to stamp the “season’s”.

1 stamp set = Cheers to the Year

2 colours = silver and white

3 elements = embossing, vellum and washi

This second card was super quick to do – I stamped the circle image in purple and then stamped the cluster of stars around the edge of the circle repeatedly in Versamark, embossing with gold powder.  I made sure to keep turning the star stamp so that it did not look like a repeated pattern.  To finish, I simply stamped and embossed the sentiment in gold.

1 stamp set = Cheers to the Year

2 colours = gold and purple

3 elements = stars, circle focal and sentiment.

I hope you like what you see.  I have my own shopping page on Stampin’ Up! which you can see here, or else click direct on the product links below.

Products used:

Stamp set: Cheers to the Year (144928)

Ink: Wisteria Wonder (126985); Versamark Ink (102283)

Cardstock:

Whisper White (106549)

Extras: Year of Cheer Speciality Washi Tape (144644); Gold Stampin’ Emboss Powder (109129); Silver Stampin’ Emboss Powder (109131)