Christmas Candles

Helloooo there :0)

I'm probably one of the few that haven't finished my Christmas cards for this year... trouble is all these lovely seasonal stamp sets keep tempting me then I have too many to choose from!!!

One of the few remaining Christmas sets in store from Wplus9 is the Merry and Bright set that Tara showed you yesterday and it really is fun to play with.....

I find the best way to work with these two-step stamp sets is to die cut all the elements and stamp them out before starting a spot of flower arranging.... any pieces you don't use can be stored in with the stamps or dies for another time. They are quite easy to line up but any small error in placement is also forgiving... after all mother nature isn't into carbon copy perfection :0)
The embossed stripes of gold are from the Mama Elephant Basic Borders.... I'm not much into gold but a little at Christmas time is okay with me :0)

I bet most of you have finished your cards now and some even written and sent them!!... I'll plod on until the Christmas Spirit taps me on the shoulder and tells me to get a wiggle on!!!

See you next Monday.... hopefully with gift packaging ideas :0)

Jenny x

Candlelight

I'm playing with one of the only remaining WPlus9 sets still in the store today since everyone had a rush on them last week - Merry and Bright which is a great little set for Christmas cards.

I do love the multi-layer stamps that WPlus9 produce as they are such fun to play with and watch the images grow as you stamp them.  If you've never used them, I thought I'd show you how they work - for example the pine branches I've used on my card come in 3 parts so I've stamped them to show you how they grow.

For my card I used a mixture of the stamps and the matching dies, stamping the lantern twice, first on the card base and then again on vellum to give a subtle glow to the embossed candle.  The pine branches went over the base image and then I used the die cut pine cones and holly leaves to cover up where they showed under the vellum - this allowed me to have the candle higher in the lantern but not have it floating in mid-air as you can't see the bottom of it.  I framed the scene in a die cut circle and stamped the sentiment onto a banner die cut with white embossing and layered it across the circle.