For the Love of Paper: Santa

Monday, September 24, 2018

Spellbinders Holiday Die D-Lites - Adding details to die cut images

Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas! Ok, we haven't even reached fall here yet, but it IS time to start thinking about creating your handmade Christmas cards. The Holiday Die D-Lites release from Spellbinders will surely excite you to get designing and creating! How could you not with these adorable characters?!?!

I am just going to give you a little peek at what I created for Spellbinders this month, because I would love for you to visit their blog and check out my entire post. These cuties are all stepped up with some quick and easy techniques. And while they look incredible, adding a few extra touches didn't take much time!

For example-see how I used a die template as a stencil on Santa's beard!

Color pencil and some ink add huge dimension to die cut images.

And yes, these die cut images have all the amazing details you would expect from Spellbinders, but its Christmas, I always want to add something extra to everything!

More simple techniques on this guy too! Multiple colors of cardstock, inking, and don't forget my favorite trick of all-time...well, you will have to head over to the blog and read for yourself! :D

Sincerely Yours,

Supplies, affiliate links used:

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

MFT Stamps October release is now available + Santa

The wait is over! The MFT Stamps October release is live right now! Which means you can head to the MFT Stamps online store and purchase the stamps, dies, stencils, and more that we have been sharing for the last five days! I will wait patiently here while you shop. Or if you are still making up your mind, let me convince you of a few more items you might "need."

Tonight I am featuring Die-namics Santa Suit. This set of dies creates the perfect Santa suit to add to your cards. Or even a small gift bag! So many possiblities!

I began by making a Wild Cherry card stock card base. I stamped it with Sketched Chevron Background in Wild Cherry ink. Any background stamp would look fantastic behind the die cut images that Die-namics Santa Suit contains, like the collar pieces and center of his suit. I saw some fantastic ideas for stepping those pieces up from the design team this week! Glitter, felt, and even stamped backgrounds!

The belt buckle has fantastic detail. I cut it, and the latch, from Brushed Gold card stock. The belt itself is two parts, one straight part to lay down, and one part that has the openings. I slipped the belt through the buckle, and then adhered the latch.

If you want to see this in progress, you can check out a video tutorial, Stepped Up Santa Suit.

To finish the card off, I added this sentiment from Winter Wonderland. It seems very appropriate. And I am hoping we get one more year of believing in Santa in this house...

And once Santa is done with his night of spreading magic, its time to head on vacation! Somehow I always picture him in a Hawaiian shirt after Christmas, so here it is!

I started creating Santa's shirt by stamping Blissful Blooms on Sweet Tooth card stock. Then I colored the images in with color pencil. The cool part about color pencil is that it resists water color washes, due to the waxy nature of the pencils. (This works best with higher quality pencils like Prismacolor.) Once the images were colored, I created water color wash with water plus Wild Cherry ink and used a large paintbrush to paint color on the entire card base. I repeated the same process for the shirt center and buttons.

I figure the holidays are so very busy for all of us, why not send a Happy New Year card instead of a Christmas card? The sentiment from Hand Lettered Holiday was the best fit! Funny and also a great way to wish friends and family a Happy New Year!

Visit the MFT Stamps Blog for more information about the release and to find out how you can win!

And one more thing to check out, is the free release class from MFT Stamps!