Delicate Ornament Thinlits Archives

Well I’m sorry. But yes – it’s time to start thinking about Christmas cards. Slowly, admittedly. But if you start now, you can be relaxed about making them – if you wait until November, it’s a bit of a forced march. I’m planning a monthly class to help you get your Christmas cards under control. But I need to learn that there’s more to Christmas cards than just making them. Last year, I was really late sending them out which makes no sense. I’d made them early enough. Anyway, here’s a card using the delicate ornament thinlits dies for a Christmas challenge at the Paper Players. I love making Christmas cards and the year that I started making cards I expected to make them all year but there’s something that doesn’t work for me, making them in January. How it’s okay to make them in July when it’s hot, I can’t explain!!

Here’s the banner which inspired my card

This gave me the perfect opportunity to use my new paper – the fabulous foil designer acetate. These are 6 sheets, 2 each of three designs for $12 and they are gold foil which looks like silver on the other. They are perfect for Christmas. Here’s the picture from the Stampin’ Up! store, beautiful, yes?

Fabulous Foil Designer Acetate

So I used the delicate ornament thinlits dies to cut out the acetate and it was hard. This was when I discovered that there’s a removable backing on the sheet. I guess it protects it, so it’s good to leave it there, but pull it off before you put it on your card. I cut out the two ornaments in the acetate and also in real red and emerald envy (this colour is going to be so amazing for Christmas!). Because the emerald envy bauble is slightly hidden, I used tombow to glue the acetate to the card. For the red ornament, I used a rolled up glue dot under the twine, but it can move. It’s fun that way. I used the retired gold twine (from last year’s holiday catalog) to tie a bow around the neck of each ornament. The green ornament is glued to the very vanilla but the real red one is popped up with dimensionals. So much fun.

The sentiment is from Embellished Ornaments and it’s stamped in real red. I did this first before adding the ornaments and then added the whole piece to a real red cardbase. This isn’t a card that I’d do at a class, it’s a little fiddly with the glue dots, but it’s a fun card to make for a few special people.

If you’re in the US, I hope that you’re enjoying your short week!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Today’s card is really unusual in that there is no stamping at all! I made it at the crop and it was yet another card that started with no real idea where it was going. I knew that I wanted to play with the delicate ornament thinlits dies but that was about it!

To start with I cut out the fancy ornament in real red card using the precision base plate which makes an enormous difference with intricate dies. I like to use the paper piercing tool (or the pokey tool as it was christened by my 8 year old friend Mara a few days ago) to help remove the pieces as well as to run around the image to clean up little wispy pieces of cardstock. I definitely wanted gold foil to go with this and toyed with cutting out the solid ornament and going from there but I wanted this fancy ornament to be star of the card with nothing in the way. In the end, I went with a mat of gold foil and just glued the cut ornament back into the hole in the real red card that it had been cut from. I thought about a string, a bow, a sentiment but they all seemed to detract from the beauty of the ornament and so I decided that less is more and stopped. I glued the gold foil and ornament onto a real red card base. I lined the envelope using one of my stack of precut liners, this one from the retired brights backgrounds designer series paper.

I’m trying to create a few simple easy to mass produce cards for those of you, including my friend Julia, who are short on time and Christmas cards. I’ll be working on those tonight.

See you tomorrow,

Liz