Stacking Snowflakes

I bought more craft supplies than I should have this year, considering that I hardly ever get anything done. I did do a few of these stacked snowflakes cards, though - this is fun to play with. That's my test-piece above.

I pulled out the lightest colors from my Distress collection - Shaded Lilac, Squeezed Lemonade, Peacock Feathers, and Tumbled Glass. The yellow almost doesn't show up enough - you'll see below, I ended up using it mostly as an accent.

I did end up using this card above, but only because I was out of time. This was really another test-piece. Anyway, this is a Hero Arts stamp set, which means you might be able to find it practically anywhere that sells craft stuff - I know Michael's has sold Hero Arts in the past, and I imagine they still do - but I got mine from Simon Says Stamp, for the record. (And also for the record, nobody's paying me to say so.) I saw this basic idea on Kristina Werner's holiday card series, and I'll link that at the bottom.

I did give in and buy the small-size Misti this year - that's the book-like thing that helps you position stamps, for those that don't know about it already. (The plastic lid you can see above flips closed - you stick the stamp right onto the lid.) I've used other positioning methods and it's far and away the best. Expensive, though, or I'd have had one a couple of years ago.

I love really simple cards and I love snowflakes and using lots of color, so this was perfect for me.


Here's Kristina's video. I almost bought these nice bright stamp-pads that she was using (which are SSS's own brand) but I realized in time that I had plenty of bright colors already to choose from. I used the Distress pads but I also have some very bright Stampin' Up stamp pads as well. Probably some others, too - bright is kinda my thing, after all!

(Note that while I'm not getting any money from anywhere, I do think Kristina has a deal with SSS - all her supply links usually go to them, so I imagine they're affiliate links.)

Stampin' Up cards

Holiday cards past, from Stampin' Up class in maybe 2011 or so! I think maybe these were all from the same year - I know we did a thing where you made like 20 cards with four or five different designs.

This one was made with one very large stamp, and an improvised giant stamp pad made from baby wipes

Glittered trees - this was supposed to have green ribbon, but I kept forgetting to put it on and I finally decided I liked it fine without it - I believe the stamp is from the "Lovely As A Tree" set. (I am just a CAS girl at heart. Why do you need the ribbon here, that's my thought!)

Embossed vellum (this one does need the ribbon, I admit). We made these in several colors and they were all really pretty.

Twinkle lights with some kind of shard glitter (I remember these being a big pain to make, because putting all the little pieces together was frustrating.)

tiny tree!

Card not sent!

Here's my super-simple card idea from last year that I didn't actually send:

The idea was that it was deliberately wonky rather than perfectly round, but I didn't have it put together right here, I think. (Added: what I mean is that the circle-within a circle is offset - two perfectly-round circles made with dies, but deliberately not perfectly centered within one another - and then I think I also offset the embossing to match.) I do think this is cute, but by the time I decided that, it was too close to Christmas to bother, and instead I just sent (non-handmade) New Year's cards. So I may resurrect this idea again later. (This was all stuff I had. I think the green paper was something from Paper Source. The stamp is from a Simon Says Stamp kit - originally I said "a year or two ago" but actually it was 2015, if you follow the link! The cute dotted paper was from a pad I had bought at some point, not from that same kit.)

(I'm taking the onlinecardclasses.com class - again - so hopefully I'll have something to show later on! I am late getting started, though.)

Snowflake tag

This has been floating around in my holiday boxes for two or three years, and I finally sent it off to a new home this year, because I sent everybody else on my little list a handmade card, and I was one short. I'm not sure what year that was exactly, but I got to experimenting with different colors of blue and different snowflake stamps - including the one that says "happy holidays" - and this was the result. I really like it and I've always intended to make more like it.

It's not exactly perfect but I am not a perfectionist, anyway.

December SSS kit

This is a card I made with the paper and stickers from the December card kit (which is apparently not sold out yet as I write this on 12/23):

I keep thinking of ways I could have improved it, but it went to a child, and he's not likely to be picky about it, so I need to just let it go!

Under the cut are some cards I did not make - these are some cards from Simon Says Stamp's website, and I'm putting them here because I imagine they will disappear from the website at some point in the future and I want to be sure I can find them again when I'm ready to make cards for next year. (I only got around to making a couple of cards from the kit, so I've got lots of stuff left.)

(Another adorable idea done with a stamp set I have is this geometric thing, done by one of the ladies below. That one would work all year round, I think.)

Simon Says Stamp December card kit

This is the only finished card I've made with the Simon Says Stamp card kit yet, but I think it's cute and really I like the pieces that are in this kit. This is going to my nephew along with his gift:

(I'm not entirely satisfied with the way I did the sequins, but eh.)

I saved the picture from the link, & here that is:

Here's most of the contents of my kit - stamps, stickers, sequins (in two colors), cardstock, and a little VersaMark pad. It appears to be exactly the same as above. The red patterned paper you can see is part of a 6x6" Pinkfresh packet that coordinates with the stickers.

There was also an idea sheet which you can see a bit of at the top left, and I think the only other thing was some embossing powder. (It's "rainbow fine embossing glitter," it says here, which is certainly not anything I already had, but I haven't tried it out yet. - Which, hmm, is this stuff, I guess, so it is embossing powder and not just glitter. I thought so, but I wasn't quite sure from that first description.)

Here's more of the paper:

You can see that the top one was what I used for the card above. There are a couple of different ones like the bottom one, with little drawings that go across the page.

I'm showing you the close-up of the stamp set for a particular reason:

...and the reason is that I adore that "happy holidays" script stamp, I've been using that stamp on everything. I like a lot of the other ones, too, and I think I'll eventually use a lot of these, but that one is the early favorite. (The all-caps "merry christmas" is also adorable, but I send cards to a number of people who don't explicitly celebrate Christmas, so it's good to have religion-neutral stamps.)

Forest cards

So here are 11 cards with basically the same design, yet you can see that nothing is exactly alike.

I believe the first one above (top left) is the one I made originally as a test piece, and I showed a picture of it previously. I had some pre-cut cards from SU in Old Olive, so I just cut my "sample" out and mounted it on the Old Olive, which is one of the colors I used for the trees anyway so it matched great. The rest of them are true one-layer cards.

Honestly, the only one where I have any serious critique on the forest part is the top center one above, where the trees are a bit scattered and go much further up on the card. But even that one looks fine. The others all look great, I think (both above and below). You can tell the ones I did together - I just stamped all the way across the bottom of the cardstock and then cut it in two afterwards. You can kind of see my progress as I did more of the tree stamping - I'm not sure if the one at the bottom right below is actually the last one I did, but it seems the most "realistic"-looking in terms of the way the trees fade into the background.

I also experimented around with various borders on the "jingle" ones below. I do like the one with the white border all the way around but again, I think they all look fine, with and without.

The only thing that really bothered me about leaving off the santa-and-sleigh stamp from the original was that I didn't feel like "jingle all the way" made much sense without it. I could have gone and gotten the other Ellen Hutson stamp set that had that stamp, but instead I went looking for a "jingle bell" stamp - that is, one with a picture of a bell. I wanted one I could put it on the inside of the card, so at least there was a follow-through with the saying. (Some people that get the card may not even notice, but at least *I* am happy, that way.) I ended up getting this one from Paper Source, and I stamped it on the inside in Real Red and it looks cute.

(And then, naturally, I ended up buying two boxes of cards and a calendar from Paper Source while I was at it. That place is dangerous.)