I'm still frantically making Christmas cards (why do I never start earlier!) so today I have 5 to share using die cut backgrounds to add impact to smaller images or just to let the backgrounds sing with a sentiment - quick (ish) and easy but really eye catching! So grab a cuppa and get ready for some last minute Christmas inspiration!
I started with the fabulous
Mistletoe Cover Die from MFT - simply cut from green card, a few drops of
stickles for berries (top tip - i started with icicle for sparkle but for added realism, whilst that was still wet added the tiniest dot of patina to get the green dot that mistletoe berries have on the end) and then finished with a a circle for my sentiment which comes from the
MFT Sending Smooches set.
Next I went for another card where the background is the star of the show - this time using the
Hero Arts Decorated Winter Branches die. I love this die - a quick snip to remove the decorations and you can easily use it for winter themed non-Christmas cards too and stamp and image in the centre! I die cut it from white but then die cut just the decorations from a scrap of
pixie-dust card so I could add some simple sparkle to the decorations (I just added colour with markers to the decs). The sentiment comes from
WPlus9's Most Wonderful stamp.
Whilst I had the
Most Wonderful stamp out, I thought I'd create another card with one of the fabulous snowmen it contains. I wanted an all white card other than him, so I used their
pine frame die to frame him whilst adding some white-on-white interest and texture. The layers to the snowman make him so easy to stamp and he's super-cute! I used
Altenew inks to stamp him (arctic and limestone for the snowman and pompom; teal cave and galactic stream for this clothes; and orange cream and firebrick for his nose) The sentiment from the same set was stamped with teal cave.
Finally I reached from the
Altenew candy cane background die - and the great thing about this die is it's a twofor! One die cut, 2 cards!
This first card uses the "bits" that fall out of the die cut background. I made this one first by paper clipping the die cut to the front of my card and gluing all the stripes in place through the holes so they all aligned perfectly. I wanted to keep the theme "sweet" so created a fun little gingerbread house for my focal image using the
gingerbread house die from Waffle Flower Crafts (which is on sale at a third off!) This is a super fun die to play with - a few simple layers and some enamel dots to look like candy stuck to the side and hey presto - a fab centrepiece. The sentiment is again from Most Wonderful by Wplus9 I really love the two different fonts in these sentiments.
For my final card for today I used the main background element from the Altenew die and then made a simple little circular scene using the recently back-in-stock after initial sell-out within hours of release of the
Gnome for Christmas set by Sugar Pea Designs. I do love to do detailed colour, but often find at Christmas I just don't have the time - so doing a tiny coloured element on a fun background is a great way to get the colouring in quicker! I just die cut a circle of white card, masked a tiny scene using just stamps from the set (it's got so many fun elements to go with the 3 gnomes!) and coloured it with
Altenew markers.
NEWS FROM THE STORE
As you may already know, we are currently in the process of developing a new online store - updating to the latest technology and affording the opportunity to add more functionality a lot of our regular customers have been asking for. This is a HUGE undertaking as once the new site is set up, we have to transfer all the data from the old store (over 17,000 product records and all the associated images, plus all the customer data so your wish lists etc transfer too) We want to do this in a way that causes as little disruption as possible, but we cannot do it without completely closing the current store as we have to have a "stop" point at which to transfer the data so it is accurate on the new site. Therefore this year when we close for our Christmas break, the store will close completely and you won't be able to purchase or add to wish lists as in previous years. This will happen on the 20th December which is the final shipping date before Christmas for the UK. The development team we are working with are working in between Christmas and New Year so we hope that we will be ready to reopen the first Monday in the New Year (6th January) but we will need a few days of testing and training to ensure we can run the new store effectively, so this date may slide if it's not perfect by the 6th! Watch this space and Facebook for updates.
Before we close, we will have a few new releases coming to store:
- MFT stamps - we will have their brand new release and the latest vault items on Tuesday
- Waffle Flower Crafts - we are waiting for a couple of items to arrive before they ship our order, we hope that will happen tomorrow so we will have it before the end of the week.
- Altenew are not having a stamp and die release this month, but have released 3 new ink collections. Our order for those is in with around 3 boxes of restocks too - we are just waiting for them to ship it and hope that will be this week.
- Concord and 9th have a new release tomorrow - as always they only shop to retailers after they release in the USA - hopefully our order will ship tomorrow or Tuesday and will again be here by the end of the week.
- Lawn Fawn have their Valentines release on the 12th - it's in transit already so we'll have it ready to go for release day.
- Sugar Pea Designs - have a new release on the 13th December - we hope it will ship on Monday/Tuesday so we should have it by release day.
- Colorado Craft Company have a new release this month but although normally they release on the 3rd due to some issues they've moved it back this month to the 13th. Again we hope it will ship this week and we'll get it in store as soon as we can.
If you want to ensure your items arrive before Christmas in the UK (it is impossible to guarantee delivery to Europe before Christmas now, as the system is really slow and deadlines are already passing for some countries) then orders need to be in by 11am on the 20th to ensure they posted that day. We will do one final postal drop on the 21st for any orders that come in after 11am but they may NOT arrive before Christmas.
The store will close at 10 pm on the 20th December
That's all for this super long blog post - time to get some more things ticked off my Christmas to-do list!
Tara
