SSS Holiday Sparkle

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp

Happy Thursday!  The Holiday Sparkle release is now available at Simon Says Stamp, and it's definitely been helping me get my Christmas cards done!

I love the idea of mass producing cards, but I get bored making the same card repeatedly.  Today's cards are a solution to this boredom.  They follow a recipe, the same products are used in each, but they are all unique in their own way.

The focal point for these cards were created using the new Sweater Weather embossing folder/dies as well as another new product, Luxury cardstock.  This cardstock has a soft brushed feel that reminds me of fabric/leather.

I started by die cutting my Sweater Weatherr pieces from the soft brown/gray color.  There's a hat, a stocking, and two mittens.  There is also a die for the pom pom on the top of the hat, as well as the cuff of the stocking.  I cut those secondary pieces from the white Luxury cardstock as well as the bottom portions of both the mittens and hat because I wanted some contrast there.

Each of the pieces was then placed in the embossing folder and run through my die cutting machine.  For those bottom pieces, I just trimmed the piece down to create the 'cuffs' for the mittens and hat.

To really bring out the pattern of the embossing, I ran my white pigment ink pad across each of the pieces.  Don't they look so lifelike?

Because I knew I was going to pop these pieces up, and the Luxury cardstock is a little softer/less sturdy than normal cardstock, I also die cut pieces from cardstock to use as a base, and adhered the luxury cardstock pieces to those.

For my backgrounds, I stamped three different backgrounds onto red cardstock using Cherry ink, trimmed them down, and then added some white splatter.

For some extra pop, texture, and interest, I die cut the Harmony Snowflakes from white cardstock to use with each card.

The stocking card features the Dimensional Quilt background.  To ground my stocking, I cut the Large Rounded Tag die from a soft gray, added some twine, and adhered it directly to my background.

The snowflakes were adhered over top, and then the stocking as well as a sentiment from the Reverse Love Peace Joy sentiment strips were popped up with foam adhesive.

The hat card features the Large Kaledoscope background (currently unavailable).  The snowflakes were adhered directly to the background, and the hat and sentiment were popped up with foam adhesive.

This one looked a little stark, so I added a few clear sequins.

This final card features the Soft Plaid background.  This time I used two sets of snowflakes in the top left and bottom right corners, and also added a bit of twin connecting the mittens.

Just like with the other cards, the embossed pieces and sentiment were popped up with foam adhesive.

These were really fun to make!

You'll want to hop over to Simon to check out the whole release, which includes my latest Printmaking design, Printmaking Pines:

Be sure to swing back tomorrow as I'll be showing off this new set as part of Day 2 of the Holiday Sparkle blog hop.

See you then!