Oh, the weather outside is frightful…

But the fire inside delightful…

So why not have a Christmas in July blog hop with the Paper Adventures team??

We really have had the most frightful weather lately, and I’ve been bunkered down with a bunch of flu-ridden kids. Normally this would provide a great excuse for some extra craft time, but with my littlest pretty much refusing to get off my lap for about 23 hours a day that’s been a bit hard! What’s a girl to do when unable to get to the craft desk and play? Well, spend hours surfing Pinterest and watching YouTube, of course! So now there’s a bunch of techniques I’m itching to try, a few of which I played with to make the cards for tonight’s hop.

I’m such a traditional girl when it comes to Christmas colours. Try as I might to make something in a more modern scheme I always default to red, green, and gold. For the distress look backgrounds on these two cards I used Poppy Parade and Shaded Spruce.

First I embossed the backgrounds with stamps from the Wishing You Well set. This is a recently retired set from last year’s holiday catalogue, which I’m sorry to say I only used once during the holiday period. But I really like it so it was good to have an excuse to have a play with it now. The images have been repeated and embossed in white embossing powder that will resist the application of ink that follows.

Distressed look backgrounds are such fun to create and really easy to do. Apply a layer of ink all over some cardstock with a sponge or brayer. The more ink you use the smoother and richer it will look. I wasn’t worried too much about blending it evenly because I knew I was going to “distress” it, which I have done here with water. It’s not that complicated – you just spray some water into your hand and then drop and flick it onto the inked piece randomly. The water droplets react with the ink and create this cool splatter pattern.

Another technique I discovered through many hours of YouTube watching (I’m afraid I forget where I first came across it) is to double emboss the cut sentiment, as I have done here with the “celebrate”. I don’t know why it has never occurred to me to do this before, but you apply Versamark and heat emboss like normal, let it dry, then repeat the application of Versamark and embossing powder. The more times you do this (I have done this piece three times) the smoother it becomes and the more dimension it has. It’s pretty amazing to watch and I encourage you to give it a go – it’s lots of fun and a really cool effect.

Before I give you the details on the next card can we just stop to admire these Mini Shipping Boxes from the new catalogue? They are so adorable. Just perfect for packaging up little treats for customers or stamping friends. All I’ve done here is wrap a band of DSP around it and tie some of the Striped Burlap Trim (currently on the clearance rack) in a bow. Super simple and cute. And what better to find under the Christmas tree than a box of Stampin’ Up!, miniature or full-sized??

This Shaded Spruce card uses the same basic recipe as the red version. The distress look background was created the same way, after the images from Wishing You Well were first stamped and embossed in white and gold.

The “wishes” is die cut from gold foil for this card. I’ve used the Well Written Dies both with foil like this and with the double embossing technique I described above, and I think I prefer the look of the double embossing. It’s a bit fiddlier to create but I love the way it looks.

One final trick I picked up was for adhering Vellum without the glue showing through. This panel, stamped with the “celebrate” sentiment from the Praiseworthy Prose stamp set, is die cut with a Stitched Rectangle then run through a sticker machine to perfectly apply an even layer of glue to the back. It’s easy to then stick down the panel and you can’t see any glue through it. Another trick I use when stamping on vellum is to use the Stamparatus – you can hold the vellum in place with the magnets (because that stuff can be slippery!) and you can stamp it twice to make sure you get a nice dark, crisp image.

So there’s my Christmas in July present to you all, sharing a little stamping wisdom 🙂

Next up on our team hop is the lovely Lisa. Hop on over to see what gorgeous festive creation she has to share with us tonight. Make sure you hop on through to see what the team and our guest designer Denise have to share.

Thanks for stopping by,
Siobhan.

Paper Adventures Christmas in July Blog Hop