My next returning favorite from the August – January Mini Catalog is the Christmas Gleaming Variety Bundle. Last year, I’m not sure what I fell in love with first, the stamp set and coordinating punches or this beautiful Specialty Designer Series paper.
Let’s begin with the paper, which take a very different approach to the traditional Christmas colors. The Brightly Gleaming Specialty Designer Series Paper features Very Vanilla as the base color along with Mossy Meadow, Night of Navy, Pretty Peacock and the “speciality” part is the Copper foiling. It is that reflection of light off of the copper that ties these colors together to creative a festive combination.
Although the sentiment used on the card front is from a now retired set, the remaining products used here are all still available. For this card, the entire base is made out of Night of Navy, layered with one of the beautiful DSP patterns. From there, I layered a strip of Pretty Peacock and Very Vanilla and off-set stamped a sentiment from the Greatest Part of Christmas Host set in Pretty Peacock. To the left, I added an ornament punched from a Copper Foil Sheet, embossed and elevated with mini Stampin’ Dimensionals. The final touch is an ivory organza bow. On the inside, I used the largest die from the Stitched Rectangles set to cut a piece of Very Vanilla for the inside and stamped a sentiment from the Perfectly Plaid stamp set.
For this next card, The base is Very Vanilla, followed by a layer of Mossy Meadow, a layer of the Brightly GIeaming DSP, another layer of Mossy Meadow and finally Very Vanilla. The two inner most layers were cut using the Stitched Rectangles Dies. A paper saving trick? I cut out the smaller of the two Mossy Meadow layers from the inside of the largest one. Since it would be covered by the Very Vanilla layer, it is a great way to make the most of your papers. I then stamped the ornament images using Versamark ink on Mossy Meadow and Cherry Cobbler, followed with gold embossing powder, which I melted with my heat gun. Once those were done, I used the punch to cut them out.
I wanted more of a water color look for the berries and holly leaves, so I used Shimmery White cardstock and stamped the image with Momento Tuxedo Black ink. Unlike the rest of SU’s cardstock, the Shimmery Whisper White works well for light watercoloring and adds a nice shimmer to the finished product. The berries, I colored with Cherry Cobbler Stampin’ Blends (alcohol markers) and used ink form the lid of my Mossy Meadow stamp pad and a water painter to color the leaves. Once those were done, I fussy cut them. The final piece was the sentiment that I stamped in Cherry Cobbler on a small strip of Very Vanilla cut to the size of the stamped image. The holly leaves and berries were adhered with Stampin’ Dimensionals.
Want to see more ideas on how this set can be used? Check out my Pinterest board.
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