Cozy Sweater Christmas Card
Hi, Crafters! Welcome back to the blog!
Today I’m sharing a cute and cozy Christmas card featuring a non-traditional color scheme and some products from Ellen Hutson’s new release, an old one from Simon Says Stamp, and two others from PinkFresh Studio and My Favorite Things (though these last two could be skipped!).
When I saw the holiday release from Ellen Hutson, I was in love with the Cozy Sweater Tag die. It’s so cute, and I really love all the die cut details on it. I’ve had this die for probably a month now, and I was really sitting and stewing (read: overthinking) on how to make a card with it. Looking through my stash, I pulled out the Christmas Sweater Background from Simon Says Stamp, and I knew it would get the job done! I bought this stamp last holiday season, but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. This year I thought, Oxide resist! If you’ve followed along with my blog, you likely know that I am a big fan of Distress Oxides. They’re beginner friendly when it comes to ink blending (and I still think of myself as a bit of a beginner) and super fun to play with since you can get amazing blends!
With that being said, I started this card off by heat embossing the Christmas Sweater Background in Alabaster embossing powder from Brutus Monroe on Simon Says Stamp 120lb cardstock. You do not have to use this thick of a paper, I used it because I didn’t want to use a big piece of the Concord & 9th white cardstock I usually use, and this one was the next smoothest I had. Once the heat embossing cooled down, I got to work on blending. I had gone back and forth on a lot of Oxide color combos, but eventually settled on Spun Sugar, Picked Raspberry, Seedless Preserves, and Chipped Sapphire, and blended them on in that order. These colors are gorgeous together, I think this might be one of my favorite color combinations so far!
Once the Oxides had dried, I die cut the 6x6 panel using my largest Waffle Flower A2 die. I knew I wanted the sweater die cut to be matted, so I played around with the Blanket Stitched Rectangle and Circle dies from PinkFresh Studio, and eventually settled on using the circle. I die cut the sweater die out of Concord & 9th Ballet Slipper for a nice contrast and glued it on the stitched circle. I die cut another Blanket Stitched Circle for some dimension and glued the whole thing on the upper half of the card front.
For the sentiment, I mixed and matched a few options to get exactly what I wanted. I stamped and white heat embossed the large Holiday Vibes sentiment stamp from Essentials by Ellen (Ellen Hutson). I LOVE this stamp and the variety of greetings on it, and best of all, it has a coordinating die that cuts them all out at once! The only thing I wish it had was a ‘from all of us’/' ‘from our home to yours’ because I had to get creative with some masking! The Home for the Holidays stamp set from My Favorite Things is another stamp set with great holiday greetings, and it had the ‘from our home to yours’ sentiment I really wanted on my card. However, it was part of a two-part sentiment. Since I couldn’t stamp it and cut it from the portion of the greeting that preceded it, I masked off the ‘happy holidays’ and stamped and heat embossed the ‘from our home to yours’.
I added a little bit of dimension behind my small sentiment strips and popped them on the card. To finish it off, I added a trail of sequins across the card. It’s been a while since I used sequins last, so the placement of these was extra precarious. I never have a method to the madness of sequin placement, just playing around until it feels right, but I do like to have them in groups of threes.
I hope you like how this card turned out! I had a lot of fun with it and the color scheme, the sequins though, maybe not as much haha! Thanks for stopping by the blog today, I hope to catch you next time with more inspiration! 😊
