SSS DieCember, Joyful Greetings

*This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Happy first day of DieCember!  Have you checked out the new DieCember release from Simon Says Stamp?  I've got a couple of items in this release including the Joyful Greetings stamp set that coordinates with the Joyful die released last month.

This bold sentiment is the perfect focal point for a card, and when used with stencils creates nice flat mailable cards.  I've got a few examples to share with you today.

This first card features the Village stencils.  The house layers were inked with Bubblegum, Morning, Sweets, and Twilight.  For the windows, I just placed the stencil over my panel, and used a white gel pen to fill in the windows.  

I then stamped the main sentiment along with a couple of secondary sentiments with black Versa Clair ink in the center of my panel.

These next two cards feature the previously released Berries and Leaves stencil, one of my favorites!

I did this two ways.  First, very clean and simple.  The stencil was placed over a blue panel and inked with Royal ink.  I did add just a bit of additional Royal inking around the edges of my panel, but not a ton.

I used my heating to make sure all of the ink was dry so I wouldn't have any issues with stray embossing powder, and then embossed the sentiment in gold in the center of the wreath.

For the green version of the card, I started by inking a panel in greens using Fairway, Field, and Pine.  I was not trying to get a very deep rich color for this.

Once that was done, I placed the stencil over the panle, and using the same colors, inked through the stencil.

After again ensuring that the panel was fully dried using my heat tool, I embossed the sentiment in gold.

I added a bit of gold splatter to finish things off.

This last card features the Holy City stencils.

There are two 'sets' of stencils here, one which adds the buildings and trees, and a second that adds the windows.  I offset these two sets vertically and VERY lightly inked each, lighter for the one that is higher on the panel, and slightly darker one that is lower and in the foreground.

It's hard to pick up in the photo, but I also used the fourth stencil, the starry sky, at the top of my panel.

I used Cadette for the card on the left, and Royal for the one one on the right.

The sentiment was then embossed with silver ink.

These were really very quick and easy to create.

Be sure to head over to Simon to check out the full release. lots of good stuff in there!