Holly Christmas Wreath

Hello, Crafters.

I found it difficult to decide which stamp set I wanted to feature for this week’s challenge! 
Eventually I settled on Embellished Ornaments which has a matching set of dies called Delicate Ornaments Thinlits.

These dies will be brilliant cut out using the Precision Base Plate. So far I have only used the plate for the butterfly dies and it worked a dream. 

I decided to use the holly stamp to create a wreath for yesterday’s card. I started with a card base in Whisper White card stock with a layer of Real Red.

On the top Whisper White layer, I drew round the inside of die no. 6 of the Circles Collection Framelits to act as my guide. Unfortunately, I didn’t put it quite low enough which meant one of my top holly leaves went off the edge.

I prepared my Stamp-a-ma-jig which was crucial in getting the placement right. To give you an idea of size, look at the last photograph, you can see the sprig of holly is longer than the sentiment.

Therefore, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stamp the holly in a circle. I practised on a scrap piece of paper and worked out the best positions for the leaves to create the rounded look I was after.

I decided I needed to lose the bottom two leaves and two berries. I covered them with tape and inked the stamp with Tuxedo Black Memento Ink and removed the inky tape.

I positioned my stamp-a-ma-jig template so the leaves lined up as I had decided would be necessary. I repeated this 4 more times and found the last time needed to be a tad shorter than all the others – can you see where the last one is?

I used my Garden Green and Real Red Markers to colour in the leaves and the berries. 

As you can see on the front of the stamp set box, the berries are half black and half white so when I had coloured them, they didn’t stand out very well.

I took my 1/8″ Handheld Punch and punched out 16 circles from scraps of Red Glimmer Paper and adhered them in place using the Two-Way Glue Pen.

I took another scrap of Red Glimmer paper and die cut the ribbon from the die in the Wonderful Wreath Framelits and glued that with the same adhesive.

Finally I stamped the sentiment using black Memento Ink onto a piece of Whisper White card stock.

I layered this onto a piece of Red Glimmer paper, using Glue Dots to adhere the two together.

This was adhered to the top layer of the card using the Two-Way Glue pen.
I hope you like the stamp set I’ve chosen for my week 12 challenge. It will be available in the new Christmas catalogue which goes live on 1st September 2015.

I’m not sure what other projects I’ll be doing with this set this week but I have a day at a time to think about it!

Until tomorrow, happy crafting.

JanB.