Hi guys!
I hope you are all doing well and are excited to have a look at the latest release from Picket Fence Studios! This is my first time posting as part of their design team and I couldn’t be more excited. As soon as I saw the sneak peeks of the sets coming out I was inspired! There are so many fantastic Christmas sets in this release. Some of my favourites include the Winter Clothes Collage (See below), A Little Nuts and all the new foiling impress dies!
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a huge sucker for big blooms so when I spotted the Christmas Poinsettia Star stamp I knew I’d be using that one right away. It’s probably not a surprise that this blog post is dedicated to that stamp, lol.
I started out by heat embossing it in white, on water colour paper. Both the embossing ink and the Arctic White Embossing powder are from Inkon3. To make sure I got a good imprint, I used my MISTI to stamp it.
After the heat embossing was done, I got my brand new Arteza TwiMarkerss out to colour the flower with. I have a YouTube video showing these off, I made yummy swatches as well as coloured the flower in. Hop on over to my channel if you want to check that out too and see the markers in action.
When the Poinsettia was coloured in, I cut out a mask to cover it and keep it pristine while I did some ink blending around the flower. I used two shades of grey Distress Oxide inks, Iced Spruce and Hickory Smoke to create a grey/silvery background. I find that adding colours to the background around big images helps them pop more!
Naturally I used my beloved Life Changing Blender Brushes, another Picket Fence Studios gem, to do the ink blending. These brushes have been such a game changer for me, I can not stress enough how fabulous they are and what a difference they made for me.
With the card background and flower done, it was time to add a sentiment and I decided to use the FaLaLaLaa foiling and diecut sentiment. I got a Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil machine earlier in the year but like an idiot, didn’t realise that I can’t use Minc foils with it so I thought it was rather rubbish. *True story*
Nope. The foiling machine is great. It’s indeed FAB and I was a bona fide idiot who didn’t read the instructions properly! Now I know to use the right kind of foil, I want to foil all the things!!
I used silver foil to keep with the colour scheme of the card (and also because the only other colour I have is rose gold and that didn’t fit) and then I used the diecut to cut out the sentiment. This I added to the card with a bit of liquid glue, I use Lawn Fawn’s glue tube, in the bottom right corner.
Once that whole shebang was added to a card base, the card was done!
I love how it turned out. A big gorgeous bloom and a blingy sentiment, what else do you need? Because this is a great way to make big impact Christmas cards, I’m going to include this post in my 12 Weekends Of Christmas series. This design could quite easily be mass produced and thanks to the water colouring aspect, each card will still be unique and special.
As always, this post is full of compensated affiliate links, mostly to Picket Fence Studios. At no extra cost to you, of course. I do however try and link everything I use, even if I’m not an affiliate, to make shopping easier for you.
Lots of love and happy crafting from Erica
If you like my work, and want to see more crafting shenanigans, you can find me on various social media. Stop by and say hello!
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My blog https://cacacraftblog.wordpress.com
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLI_WLw9Et5Zd-DONeY5XDg
CaCaCraft by Erica 