Hello and welcome to day 3 of our Sneak Peek Week! This week I am showcasing cards using our newest Fall & Holiday collections which will be available to purchase on Friday, August 26th.
Today I am sharing ideas using our new Winter Wreaths Stamps, Holiday Greetings Stamps and Joyful Holiday Paper. I hope you'll grab a cup of coffee and join me! :)
Card No. 1: For my first card I paired the holly and berries from our new Holiday Greetings Stamps with the bow and vine style wreath from our new Winter Wreath Stamps. This stamp set comes with two different wreath base options and then a number of elements to decorate your wreath with. In this case I kept my wreath very simple and added interest with my background and the pops of red and pink colors.
For my background I used the inside portion of our Frilly Frames Eyelet Lace Dies which I ran through my die-cutting machine twice (overlapping the two cuts slightly) to cover my entire 5.5" wide card panel. I then cut the scalloped edge using the border die from our Slimline Pennant Dies. For my sentiment I used one of the four greetings from the new Holiday Greetings Stamps. These are similar in style to our popular Season's Greetings Stamps, but have been scaled down to work for smaller spaces and I must say I am head over heals in love! Lastly I added some pale pink pearls from our Iridescent Pearls assortment.
Card No. 2: As a little background, I have been wanting to create a holiday wreath set for a number of years now, but I kept becoming intimidated that my vision wouldn't be able to execute within the confines of a 4x6 set, but I will say I'm so glad I finally got past my fears as I'm really happy with how the set turned out, even if this one fir bough wreath image did take me take me forever and a day to design!
I will admit it can be a little bit tricky to line up the stamped image with the coordinating die given all the rotating options so my suggestion for mass producing would be to make a little mark on the back of the die with a sharpie indicating the top (once you've figured out which direction is the top and then to put a little dot outside of the confines of the stamped image on your cardstock after stamping it so you can always line it up quickly (or some variation of this concept depending on what works best for you).
I also want to point out that the poinsettia and pinecone images in the Winter Wreath set may qualify as the world's smallest layering stamps, however I made a huge effort to simply them to make them easy to line up so they really aren't too difficult to use if you are already accustomed to working with layering stamps (and you have decent eyesight). For lining them up, I found it easiest to start with the darkest ink color and work my way towards the image with the lightest ink. Once I had the images set up in the corners of my two MISTI tools however, I did end up stamping them from lightest to darkest to prevent my inks from bleeding. If you only have one stamp positioning tool at your disposal, Jennifer McGuire also has an excellent tutorial about how to create "bumpers" for your tool HERE.
For this card I started by inking on a light amount of Twisted Citron Distress ink for my background, making it lighter towards the center. I then repeatedly stamped the little tree branch images from our Classy Christmas Stamps around the outside edge as a frame of sorts. To decorate my wreath, I used the pine cones, poinsettias and berries. I finished my card with the Season's Greetings sentiment from the Holiday Greetings Stamps and a few scattered Crystal Clear Confetti for a touch of sparkle.
Card No. 3: Up next is a Winter Wreath Card using the fir bough style wreath on a 4" x 7" door I fashioned from cardstock and red craft foam used to provide extra dimension for the raised door panels. While I love all the colors of the rainbow, red is my signature color and I have always longed for a red door, but sadly it just hasn't fit the style of the homes we've had so far. Here's hoping it works out for our next home (knock on wood). To create a doorknob, I die-cut a small circle from metallic gold specialty paper using the holly berry die from our Winter Greenery Dies. 
To tie the gold doorknob in with the rest of my card, I then heat embossed my "Christmas Cheer" greeting from our Festive Greetings Stamps using Gold Embossing Powder. I stamped my greeting on the same color of red cardstock and then fussy cut it out to help it blend better with the background of my door and not have it distract from the wreath.
Card No. 4: Next up is a slimline style card where I lined up three of the vine style wreaths, alternating the bows and decorative pieces between the top and bottom to add interest to my card. To create my speckled background I inked up a piece of white cardstock using Broken China and the new Uncharted Mariner Distress Ink. I then spritzed it both with water and flicked on some watered down Uncharted Mariner Distress Ink Reinker using an old toothbrush. When it was dry, I then trimmed down the panel to allow a thin white border of my card base to peek out and added stitching to all four sides by using the single stitching die from our Slimline Basic Border Dies. I completed my card by heat embossing the "merry & bright" greeting from our Festive Greetings Stamps and adding a few scattered pearls from our Iridescent Pearls assortment.
Card No. 5: I wanted to make sure to create a card today showing that just because this set is called Winter Wreaths doesn't mean you are limited to only Christmas themes. For this card I paired the vine wreath, pine cones and bow from the Winter Wreaths Stamps with the pumpkin and leaves from our Crisp Autumn Stamps. I tried my best to tie the colors in with the beautiful striped patterned paper from our Critter Country Paper pack and added a scalloped edge to my white panel using one of the border dies from our Slimline Pennant Dies. Finally I stamped my oversized "thankful for you" sentiment using a greeting from our Elegant Leaves Stamps with Versafine Clair Pinecone Ink.
Card No 6: Next up is a card with a bit of a vintage feel using the fir bough wreath and bow from Winter Wreaths with the "happy holidays" sentiment from our new Holiday Greetings Stamps which I heat embossed with Rangers Vintage Pearl Embossing Powder. I decorated the wreath using our Pink Ombre Pearls and Purple Ombre Pearls which I think resemble retro ornament baubles and used Multi Matte Medium liquid adhesive to adhere them. For the base of my card, I cut an aqua scalloped frame to match my bow using our Frilly Frames Eyelet Lace Dies. This was a last minute card I squeezed in for today's post, but it ended up being one of my favorites. Those pearls really steal the show!
I love that just by changing the background color from blue to pink, the cards have a completely different feel. I can't decide which one I like best. Which color is your favorite?
I finished each poinsettia flower by adding a grouping of jewels to the center using our Ruby Red Jewels for my pink card and our Red Garnet Jewels for my blue card using Ranger Multi Matte Medium. The two different color of jewels worked out nicely since I had used slightly different colored cardstock scraps I had on hand for each card.
That wraps up today's sneak peeks. I'm so happy you spent part of your day with me today. I read all your comments and they mean so much! I'd love to give a $25 gift code to one lucky winner using the rafflecopter below. We will be having daily contests and a big 7th birthday Blog Hop this Friday with more giveaways at every stop on the hop. All contests will run through Friday, September 2nd at Midnight PST with winners announced here on Sunday, September 4th. :)
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Here's a closer look at the our new Winter Wreaths Stamps, Holiday Greetings Stamps and Joyful Holiday Paper used today (which will be available to purchase starting on August 26th):
Other Sunny Studio Supplies Used:
