Inspiration: November 2017 Card Maps Sketch + Simon Says Stamp Wednesday (Layer It Up)
I kept working with the Wintergreen Designer Series Paper and the 'Tis the Season ephemera pack from Cocoa Vanilla. When I first went through the die-cuts, I had layered the bell over the woodgrain oval and thought it looked really neat, so I had put that aside for later. It was the starting point of this card. I looked through sketches to find something that would work with this pairing and went from there. I love the soft colours and the beautiful papers. Believe it or not, the pack is dwindling down, but I think I still got a couple of cards left in there. I wanted to give my ephemera pieces a little bit more presence so I decided to add a snowflake underneath. I wasn't sure if I'd prefer a white patterned one or a pearlescent vellum one, so I die-cut both to test out and ended up layering them instead. I found a neat Happy Holidays sentiment with uneven font from last year's snowflake set and I stamped it directly on patterned paper. (I love using tone on tone designs for the inside of the card where we will write our message or for the sentiment block. I find I have a harder time designing with patterned papers when those softer pages are not included in a collection.)
For the scalloped border from the sketch, I was looking through border dies and the newly released Snowflake Border from Lawn Fawn caught my eye. I die-cut it out and tried it, but it was too large for my card design, so I went back to using a scalloped border instead. That being said, I did love the look of the Snowflake Border so I recycled my die-cut piece inside the card instead, which looked much better there.
I had been looking for my big tub of beads, which for a couple of weeks I couldn't locate no matter how much I tried and I finally found it yesterday as I was putting something else away in a cupboard I don't often use. That made me want to add a couple of beads in there, so I did some wire wrapping to add to the bell. I was really disappointed when I first bought the beads and pins as I discovered the holes in the beads are so big that it was going right through. Thankfully, I discovered that you can use sequins and seed beads (which I have a ton of as I'm a stitcher and use them on my cross stitch projects) on the pin to prevent the beads from falling off. I found some dusty pink seed beads that were the perfect shade and included white sequins, which I also reused as embellishments on the card.
The last touch was adding Nuvo drops in four shades to finish embellish the bell. For the envelope, I picked a lovely Aquamarine metallic colour, added another bell die-cut and used Nuvo drops as well. If you ever invest in colored envelopes (which it took me a while to do so as I was wary of the price), keep in mind that envelopes with a metallic sheen are much easier to pair with other cardstock and patterned papers than plain colours are. Because the colour varies a bit as it catches the light, you can get away with something that's a similar shade whereas it is way more obvious when a colour is not a perfect match with a plain colored envelope. I have some in Seafoam and I haven't used them half as much as the Aquamarine and Lagoon metallic ones for this exact reason. Here, the aquamarine envelope is not the same shade as the Sage Shadow cardstock I used, but it goes really well with is.
As Stacey and Clinton used to say all the time on What Not to Wear, "It doesn't match, it goooes!" (Good times!)
Supplies
Stamps: Tourbillon de flocons (Beautiful Blizzard - Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Sage Shadow (Stampin' Up!); Pearlescent Vellum (Lawn Fawn)
Designer Series Paper: Wintergreen (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: Always Artichoke (Stampin' Up!)
Accessories: 'Tis the Season Ephemera Pack (Cocoa Vanilla);
A2 Aquamarine Metallic Envelope (envelopes.com); Seed Beads (Mill Hill);
Satin White Sequin Mix (Little Things from Lucy's Cards); Sparkly Ribbon (Unknown Source);
Cloud 9 Dream Drops, Calming Aqua, Bubblegum and Bottle Green Crystal Drops (Nuvo);
Bead Value Pack (Bead Landing); Basic Stitch Lines Die-namics (My Favorite Things);
Outside In Stitched Rectangles Dies, Snow Border Dies (Lawn Fawn);
Snow Crystals Dies (KaiserCraft); Adorning Accents Dies and Embossing Folders,
Stampin' Dimensionals (Stampin' Up!)
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