A contemporary Christmas card made using the fantastic free gifts which come with Die-Cutting Essentials Special Edition Volume 2 :D I decided that I wanted to do an iron-off emboss resist for my background, so I die-cut the little star die out of some funky foam, and I stamped and embossed both the outside outline star and the centre star all over the background, I used Perfect Medium ink and Cosmic Shimmer True White embossing powder for this :D I then ink blended over the top using Distress Inks, I started with Spun Sugar, then used Picked Raspberry and finally ended with Abandoned Coral, I decided on this colour combo as I thought it would go well with the patterned paper which I've used (this is also free with the magazine!!!) To add a little bit more to the background, I also splashed on a little bit of water, and then picked this up with some kitchen roll :D
Next step is the ironing off, its not that clear in the video, as I didn't film the ironing part, but basically all you do is sandwich your background in a folded piece of printer paper, then lay this on top of a folded tea towel, then just iron over the top (you want to make sure you're definitely ironing onto the piece of printer paper and not directly onto your background!!) then you can repeat this process a few times to ensure you've taken off as much embossing powder as you can :D I then used a Creative Dies Nesting Star die to cut my aperture in my background piece, and also straight through my card blank too (you can see how I lined this up in the video :D) I also cut a hill using one of the Stitched Hillside border dies from Lawn Fawn, and I combined the Christmas word from one of the stamps in the set with a tiny Happy stamp from the new Cutie Pie Lawn Fawn stamp set :D For the stamping of the sentiment and of the words on the tree I used Charcoal Hero Arts ink, and I also used a grey fine line pen to add tiny stitching all around the perimeter of the star :D I wanted to make the inside look neat, so I added a second tree on the inside (you can see this in the photos and in the video) however this die isn't completely symmetrical, so you can see some of the other tree behind the front tree and vice versa, but I think this adds nicely to the depth of the tree :D Hope you like the card :D
To see the process behind this card, please watch my YouTube video below, or over on my channel CRaFTi PoTeNTiAl :D
A few more photos below :D
I'm soooo excited that this special issue of Die-Cutting Essentials just came out, as I have some of my cards in it!! The first time I've ever had cards properly published!!! It's like a dream come true, I'm soooo happy :D :D :D The magazine includes the step-by-step instructions for five shaker cards which I made with the free gifts, and there's also an additional card here too :D It's so surreal to see my cards professionally photographed an in a magazine!!! I still can't believe it :D :D :D
