Welcome to Friday, everyone! This week, we’ve been All About Christmas and have been taking a tour through all of the fun holiday products that Stampin’ Up! offers.
Today is another installment of Sketchy Fridays, where each week we’ll be using a card sketch to design our featured card. Right now, we’re working through a full series of designs using the card sketches found on page 22 of the current Stampin’ Up! Annual Catalog.
This week’s card is based on Sketch #17 and features the snowman from the Filled With Cheer stamp set and the fun Take a Bow designer series paper in the new Stampin’ Up! Holiday Mini catalog.
We get started with a base of Real Red cardstock. I chose a sheet of the new Take a Bow designer series paper for the strip elements in the sketch and used both sides of one sheet of paper. I felt like the focal panel needed to be more than simple strips of patterned paper and this is where I chose to add two additional layers to bring everything together. I used some of the red Festive glimmer paper as the mat immediately behind our paper strips, and this mat is cut using the Perennial Postage die. And then to help the whole focal panel pop against our card base, I added a mat of white cardstock that has been diecut with the Deckled Rectangle die and then embossed using the Snowflake Sky embossing folder. Our focal panel is stamped with the snowman from the Filled With Cheer stamp set and then diecut with the Perennial Postage dies so that we’re just capturing the snowman and Christmas tree. The snowman is colored with Stampin’ Blends. Red and white baker’s twine is twisted around the bottom of our panel to tie everything together (no pun intended). The top-right edge of our panel is lightly sponged with Real Red ink to create a nice backdrop for our separate sentiment panel. The sentiment from Greetings of the Season is stamped in red on white cardstock and then diecut with the circle die from Changing Leaves and then adhered over our sponged focal panel corner. The focal panel is adhered to the backdrop with dimensionals. A few peppermints and rhinestones finish things off and help draw the eye across and to the more important elements on our card.
I love sketches because they give me a great place to get started. Sometimes I stick to a sketch just as it is. And other times, like today, I venture just a tiny bit outside the lines. I really love the simplicity of today’s sketch, but as I started working with it in conjunction with all of the elements in today’s card design, I felt like we needed a few extra layers to be sure everything works together but also, and more importantly, to ensure that all of the elements really pop.
Tomorrow we’re revisiting a few old favorites as we make our way through the enchanted Christmas forest. I hope you’ll pop by and check it out!
Products used in today’s card:
Real Red, Basic White cardstock
Take a Bow, Festive glimmer DSP
Filled With Cheer, Greetings of the Season stamps
Stampin’ Blends
Snowflake Sky embossing folder
Perennial Postage, Deckled Rectangles, Changing Leaves dies
Red & white twine
Peppermints
Rhinestones
Dimensionals
Adhesives
Song Sparrow Papercrafts 