May Your Holidays Sparkle and Shine

Here’s the holiday card that I made to send out to family and friends this year. It went out in the much later than I’d intended, so hopefully they’ve arrived or at least started to arrive by now. For some reason, I just had a hard time coming up with an idea this year—and once I got an idea in mind, I had a crafting crisis (broken die cutting machine!) that needed to be resolved before the cards could be finished.

Here’s the final product. It has a bunch of layers but is still pretty clean and simple. I made a window card showing off one of the pretty stitched snowflakes die cut with a new die from Lil’ Inker Designs. I used my Silhouette to cut out all of the panels with window openings so that the placement would be pretty consistent from piece to piece. I’m not much of a Silhouette expert, so there was more than a little trial and error going on there as I got things set up at first, but once I had the pieces figured out, things came together pretty quickly.

I did a combination of blue on blue and pink on pink cards—doing the two different colors helps me to sustain my own interest when I’m mass producing a design. The “may your holidays sparkle and shine” sentiment from the Winter Greetings set is stamped on the top panel in a coordinating ink. I wrapped some twine around the panel, too, to give it some texture, then used foam tape to adhere it to the cardfront.

The die cut silver shimmery snowflake is set inside the card with more foam tape. I added a crystal to the center of each snowflake for ever more sparkle. Between the twine, the layers, and the crystal, these cost a bit extra to mail, but I think they’re worth it!

If you’re celebrating today, I hope you’re able to enjoy the day with family and friends. Chloe the cutie puppy and I will be hanging out at home with our four legged houseguest, her Yorkie-Maltese mix pal Sadie (who’s about the size of Chloe’s head!). Chloe's being a wonderful hostess, which hopefully will continue for the rest of Sadie's visit . . .

Materials Used:
Winter Greetings stamp set and snowflake die (Lil’ Inker Designs); cardstock (Bazzill); Sterling Silver cardstock (Clear and Simple Stamps); iridescent crystals (Darice); baker’s twine; foam tape