Those Twinkling Lights

December 06, 2017 0 Comments

Hello and happy Wednesday everyone! Can you believe there are only 18 more shopping days until Christmas! Are you ready? If you are not, you are in good company! I like shopping for gifts, but I really dislike wrapping. I need a group of elves to come help me in that department. Wonder if Santa could lend me a couple?

Today I wanted to share a fun card that is so easy to put together using the fun Dare 2B Artzy Christmas bulb and scripty Christmas sentiment die from the Merry Christmas Layer Die set. It really plays into our December challenge theme, Spirit of the Season.

The Dare 2B Artzy Christmas bulb is a single bulb die cut and the little topper that goes on it, which is very nice because you can really do a multitude of things with it. For my card today, I wanted it to appear to be Christmas lights strung up along a pine bough.

I started by cutting a piece of black cardstock with a stitched rectangle die that was 4 x 5. Then I used a diagonal stitched die to cut that piece of black cardstock at an angle. It cut out a one ½-inch section of my cardstock at an angle. If you have a stitched border die, it would work perfectly as well for this.

Now that I had two pieces of cardstock, I used the little branch from the Poinsettia Tangle stamp set. I stamped it with some white pigment ink onto the cut edge of the black cardstock and sprinkled on some white glitter embossing powder and heat set it. I repeated the process all the way across the cut edges of both pieces of cardstock. I did reverse the angle of the branch for the top piece so that they stamped in the opposite direction.

Next, I was on to die cutting the little Christmas bulb and the connector from various pieces of scrap cardstock I had in my scrap bin. The nice thing about small dies is that they allow you to use up those scraps that you probably have laying around. I only have one little bulb so I cut about 15 of them from various colors. My arm got quite a workout making this card since I have a manual die cut machine. I believe you could probably layer up a couple of pieces of cardstock and cut through two at a time if your paper is not too heavy or if you added a shim.  I repeated the process with a darker green cardstock for all of the little toppers for the bulbs.

For each bulb, I glued the topper to the bulb and set an acrylic stamping block on it while it dried.

I had the scripty Christmas word cut from some glitter cardstock leftover from the turnabout cards I made for the December Challenge cards. I used that and ran it through my Xyron machine to add some adhesive to the back.

I cut an A2 size piece of red cardstock with my favorite scalloped rectangle die. I layered up the red cardstock with the black and put them all into my MISTI so that I could get the placement for my sentiment in the center of the card. I aligned all of the pieces of cardstock and then peeled back the adhesive sheet from the scripty Christmas word and placed it in the diagonal section onto my red cardstock.

I needed to add the Merry to the sentiment so I used the Merry Christmas from the Tis the Season stamp set and positioned it so that it was above the scripty Christmas. I masked off the Christmas part of the sentiment so that it would not stamp onto the card. Once I was happy with the placement, I inked up the Merry with some Versamark and heat embossed it with some Fine Detail White embossing powder.

Since the Xyron tends to leave some little sticky webbing between the letters on my Christmas script, I used an Adhesive Eraser and carefully removed some of the excess adhesive that was showing on the card front. There are lots of nooks and crannies, but it does a good job of getting the sticky residue off.

Next, it was time to glue the Christmas bulbs into place on my card front. I positioned them over the embossed branches and tried to fill in the gaps that were in a few places. Alternating colors, I glued each one down with some Ranger Multi-medium matte. Once they were glued in place, I once again placed some acrylic blocks over the top until the glue was dried.

Once everything was dried, I used some dimensional foam to pop up the black panels and the red cardstock onto my white top folding card base.

I added some red sequins to my card front to add some extra sparkle and I used some Clear Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen to all of the colored bulbs.

I do not know about you, but I think that Christmas lights are one of the best parts of the holiday season. Seeing the trees and houses all lit up really makes me, feel festive.

I hope you are enjoying the Spirit of the Season and finding joy in the simple things like lights on a tree, baking, wrapping and making memories with friends and loved ones.

Perhaps you are finding joy in creating a fabulous project for our December challenge, Spirit of the Season. There is still plenty of time to get in on the challenge as it runs through 12/31. Remember, you could win a stamp set of your choice. That would be a great way to start the New Year!

This is my last official post for the month of December for Dare 2B Artzy. The DT Members have a nice break to enjoy the holidays. I wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year! I will be back on Wednesday after New Year’s!

Hugs,

Tonya

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