Cherish the Season Christmas Card

Hello, Crafters.

Today’s card is the same basic sketch as yesterday’s Snowflakes card except with jingle bells. This is probably one of the most fiddly cards I’ve made but now I have sussed out what needs to be done, it’ll be so much easier next time! LOL! I didn’t want to have empty leaves and berries and my first thought was to put small pieces of cardstock behind the holes but that would have made the leaves and berries look sunken! One of my dear Dad’s mantras was “if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well!”

My original plan was to use Garden Green and Real Red Cardstock (CS) but then I remembered I had some of the Red and Green Foil Sheets – just what I needed for holly leaves and berries! I cut a couple of strips of the green Foil that were about an inch wide. In the Sounds of the Season Dies there are four different sized bells and after I’d die-cut one in each size using Silver Foil Sheets, I die-cut two more of the second to largest bells. I carefully pushed out the silver leaves and berries and put them into a small cello bag. At this stage, I hadn’t decided what the design of my card was going to be, so each time I ran some through my Cut & Emboss machine, I also die cut one large and one small branch. As it happened I didn’t use any of them, so I have put them into another small cello bag for safekeeping. Although I haven’t had my Cut & Emboss Machine very long, I have used it heaps and my cutting mats are very, very marked. To make sure I didn’t waste any of the Foil Sheets I cut some small pieces of red and green to lay over the centres of the bells dies. The leaves and berries are too close to each other to die-cut the pieces I needed in the individual colours! I cut small strips in each colour that covered the area I needed and saved the red leaves and green berries in small cello bags. Will I ever need green foil berries or red foil holly leaves? I don’t know but it’s not a problem to bag them and hold on to them just in case!! Once I had enough green leaves and red berries for the four bells I started to adhere them in place.

I put some regular tape on the back of all four bells and popped the leaves and berries into their correct places. They just needed a little bit of pressure to get them to adhere onto the tape. Before I adhered the bells in place I stamped the MERRY CHRISTMAS sentiment from the Cherish the Season Stamp Set along the bottom of the top layer, using Garden Green Ink. As I was using my Stamparatus I was able to wash my stamp with my Simply Shammy and ink with Versamark. Once I had stamped with the Versamark I dipped my cardstock in the Clear Embossing Powder and heat set it with my Heat Tool.

Now that I had completed the sentiment I was ready to adhere the bells. I chose to use Dimensionals and added one at the back of the ring at the top of the large bell. Next, I adhered the second-largest bells on either side of the large bell using more Dimensionals including one at the very top on the rings. When I was positioning the bells I made sure the curved line on each of them lined up with each other! Initially, I thought I could use the die-cut branches but I decided I didn’t like that idea and looked in my ribbon draw for some silver cord. All I could find was a length of retired 1/8″ Silver Ribbon so I tied a small bunny-ear bow, added a Glue Dot on the Dimensional that was showing through the top of the bell and then popped the bow on top. I repeated this for the two smaller bells, too.

I finished the front of my card with five green rhinestones from the Holiday Rhinestones. Inside the card, I added a layer of green foil and then a top layer of Whisper White cardstock. In the top right-hand corner, I adhered the third second to the largest bell. The sizes of the layers aren’t the regular sizes. ***I’ll put them below today’s blog when I’ve had a chance to work them out. That’s it from me today. I look forward to being back with you tomorrow and in the meantime please take care and stay safe. Happy crafting.

JanB. xx
*** Added below the products

Products used for this project: please click on any of the links to be taken to my 24/7 online Stampin’ Up! shop. The Hostess Code for SEPTEMBER 2020 is AYW6BVVJ. Thank you. xx

Whisper White A4 Card Stock [106549] £9.00	Silver Foil Sheets [132178] £4.75	Red & Green Foil Sheets [153510] £9.25	Cherish The Season Bundle [155154] £33.25	Garden Green Classic Stampin’ Pad [147089] £7.00	Garden Green Classic Stampin’ Ink Refill [102059] £3.50
Versamark Pad [102283] £8.75	Versamark Refill [102193] £5.50	Clear Stampin’ Emboss Powder [109130] £5.50	Heat Tool – Uk Plug [129054] £28.00	Heat Tool – Eu Plug [129055] £28.00	Holiday Rhinestone Basic Jewels [150457] £5.50
Stamparatus [148187] £46.00	Simply Shammy [147042] £7.50	Paper Trimmer [152392] £23.00	Paper Snips [103579] £9.25	Take Your Pick [144107] £9.00	Bone Folder [102300] £6.50
Grid Paper [130148] £11.75	Small Grid Paper [149621] £6.00	Multipurpose Liquid Glue [154974] £4.50	Silicone Craft Sheet [127853] £5.50	Stampin’ Dimensionals [104430] £3.75	Mini Stampin’ Dimensionals [144108] £3.75