I wanted to make a less traditional coloured wreath with the Wondrous Wreath set and decided on a silver and gold colour scheme. However since the stamp with less leaves is stamped over the base one, it would be nigh on impossible to do with actual heat embossing so I decided that delightful dijon and smoky slate were close to the metallics. I think that this is the first time I’ve ever used smoky slate as a base – I’m viewing it as silver rather than grey so as not to shock people who know of my grey dislike.

The first thing to do when using Wondrous Wreath is to cut out the middle of the wreath before any stamping. It’s much easier to fit the stamping around the hole than to have to place the framelit when you can’t see exactly where it’s cutting. The first leaves were stamped in smoky slate and the second layer with less leaves was in the delightful dijon. I gave it a little time to dry and then rubbed the embossing buddy over it and inked up the berries in versamark. Next I inked them with real red and stamped and added clear embossing powder. It’s hard to show the glossiness of the berries, but it’s there. Once the wreath was complete, I used the outer framelit to cut it out. It’s popped up on dimensionals on the smoky slate card base and then I cut out the Joy (in the same framelits) from red foil. It’s only now as I’m typing that I’ve realised that the red foil isn’t current any more, so you’ll have to pretend it’s copper, gold or silver!

I hope you enjoyed today’s project. Please use the hostess code to get free product; the current one is XD4D794N (if your order is over $150, don’t use the code, you get the rewards, but you still get the free gift from me). Click here to go to my online shop or here to join my team. To sign up for Paper Pumpkin and get BOGOF until October 10, click here and use the code BOGO. The World Card Making deals last until tomorrow and the “buy 3 get one free” offer for DSP is good for the rest of the month.
See you tomorrow,

Liz

This week’s challenge from the Paper Players is fancy – here’s the banner:

This was quite a tough challenge since I tend towards the Clean And Simple type of card, but I was determined to give it a try. I really tried hard to use the All is Calm Snowflake embellishments. When that didn’t really work, I tried ribbon. And then tried to combine the two, but nothing was feeling right, TOO fancy perhaps. The Stampin’ Up! Wondrous Wreath set was out on my table from a couple of days ago and I decided to emboss it in gold. What a surprise, I know. After embossing it on garden green, I realised that my card stock was half an inch smaller than my regular card size and decided to add gold foil as a mat. Now this is looking fancy. I got a sentiment from Endless Wishes and embossed that in gold also.

The challenge says that if I think it’s fancy, then so do they, and lots of gold and green and mats is fancy for me. But I wondered about MORE. I coloured some rhinestones with the medium cherry cobbler blendability but whilst musing about whether this was a good idea, my mother peered over my shoulder, admired the green and gold and said – what about the plain sparkly things. I wasn’t sure, but held a medium sized rhinestone over the card with tweezers and she was impressed. And dared me to add one to each large circle. Twelve rhinestones?? On one card?

I decided to accept her dare. And I really like how the card came out, as did she. My father loved it too.

The rhinestones don’t look quite right here – here’s a close up at an angle to show them looking more sparkly:

I lined the envelope with the background DSP in garden green.

I’ve been a bit preoccupied lately (jobs and visitors will do that to you) and haven’t done a challenge in a while. I’ve also been finding it hard to make things that I like. Coincidence? 🙂

So this morning I went looking for a good colour combination and found it at Hand Stamped Sentiments.

I left the cardstock in the appropriate colours out on my table and looked at them from time to time. I eventually decided that I wanted to use Stampin’ Up!’s Wondrous Wreath stamp set along with the matching framelits. First I stamped on very vanilla card stock which looked great, but probably not terribly innovative. So then I decided to emboss in clear on the soft sky – forgetting that of course the subsequent stamping wouldn’t work. So then I decided to approach it backwards.

I first cut out the middle of the wreath using the framelit – this makes it much easier to line things up. Cutting it out later is definitely harder. Then I stamped the second layer of leaves in garden green – this is a tad tricky because you don’t have the first layer to help you line up. I looked at my previous version and figured where the garden green leaves should be relative to the middle cut out. Then I took the real red and stamped the berries, trying to line them up with the garden green leaves. After this I stamped what should be the first layer of leaves – or at least the layer with the most leaves – and stamped in versamark. I sprinkled the clear embossing powder over and used the heat tool. As an aside, I can’t decide if the heat tool, the big shot or the stamp-a-ma-jig are my favourite tools. Certainly I’d hate to craft without any of them.

Since the design of this stamp set means that the second layer of leaves is right on top of the first, this means that I have embossing powder over both the soft sky and garden green leaves. After heating, everything is lovely and shiny.  Using the wonderful wreath framelits to cut out the word Joy I found that the garden green was just a bit, well, drab. So I grabbed my versamark pad and pressed it over a piece of garden green and sprinkled clear embossing powder all over it and heated it. I then cut out the joy and now it’s not drab. It’s shiny and stands up to the wreath. Here’s a close up. I failed to get the shine on the wreath itself, but the joy does glisten.

I popped up the wreath with dimensionals and adhered it to a soft sky base. I did my Susan Itell inspired envelope and lined it with the backgrounds DSP in soft sky.