Day 16- Time to Shellabrate the Season!

Living in a coastal climate, I always love creative ways to make Christmas cards that fit that bring a touch of Florida into the design. In these two card examples that I demonstrated at my November Stampin’ Up!® workshop, I 

used the Sanded background stamp with a shell stamp from the Seaside set to create this simple and elegant card. The verse is appropriately from the Shellebrate stamp set which I used for the Surfin’ Snowman pull-up card. Tomorrow I will post another set of cards made with that cute set.

To recreate this:  Cut a piece of Naturals Ivory CS to 3-3/4" x 5". Stamp shell in versamark ink and use Gold Stampin’ emboss powder & heat tool to emboss the shell image. Ink Sanded background stamp with Versamark pad and colorize using chalk Stampin’ pastels in natural tones of mustard, cocoa, chocolate, carmel, moss and rust, or add others you like! The sponge daubers work great for this! Punch 1/16" hole in top right corner and insert mini gold brad. Mount layer onto More Mustard Cardstock. Tie chocolate chip taffeta ribbon around front panel and trim points. On a small scrap of chocolate chip cardstock, emboss verse in gold, tear bottom edge, drag over versamark pad and emboss edging in gold for a gilded effect. Bend top left corner down. Mount onto card front. Note: In the second card sample, I added some more colored pastels to the background, made a bow with ribbon, added embossing around edges of shell layer and adding more tearing to the verse. You can always use the same basic concept, change out ink colors, papers, ribbons, backgrounds to get a variety of looks, not only on this example, but on any project. Tip: The reason I embossed the shell first in gold was to avoid the gold embossing powder sticking to the versamark ink used with the pastels. So whenever you want to add embossing to a chalked background or stamped card, you have to plan to do the embossing first, unless you don't mind having some touches of embosssing in your background.

If you want to see the Stampin' Up! sets that will be retiring, click here to view. Order by Dec. 23rd and receive 10% off plus FREE shipping!!! You can order these directly from my website. They will no longer be available after Jan. 18th.

A Perfect Time to “Give Thanks”

I thought today was the perfect day for this special card. I am very grateful today for the many blessings that I have received and for how amazingly lucky I feel to be able to connect with so many wonderful, talented people and the amazing friendships that have grown since I have begun scrapping and stamping. I feel very blessed that God has filled me with so many ideas and words to share, and this blog has been the perfect place to do that. Thank you for visiting, posting comments, sharing your creativity and mostly for inspiring me to keep doing what I love and live to do...create. 

This “Give Thanks” card uses the Stampin’ Up!® level 3 hostess set, Happiness Always with the Sanded background stamp. The Really Rust Cardstock and raffia accent add to the rustic feel of this card. I used reinkers and a baby wipe to create the multi-colored swiped background behind the gold embossed leaf. (The colors can be bold or subdued based on the colors you choose to use.) Have fun trying this technique!

On the sanded background, I used autumn colored markers to give the stamp various shades and dragged Kiwi Kiss, Pumpkin Pie, Always Artichoke and Basic Brown pads over the edges & card front for colored distressing. The Thanks verse is from the Occasions Collection hostess set with a handwritten “Give” added with a Pumpkin Pie marker.