Christmas Bells

Hello, Crafters.

I hope you've had a great weekend, and for those of you who are here in the UK, I hope you're enjoying our extra day - Bank Holiday Monday!

We only have another three days before our new Christmas catalogue goes live on 1st. September 2016. I've decided it's time I started playing with my pre-order goodies! 

Today's card, like all my cards, evolved, but at first I wasn't sure I really liked it. I showed it to hubby and he loved it. When I told him how I felt about it he said I was reading too much into it! Maybe it's because I had so much umming and arring about it!

My idea was to have the sentiment in a semi-circle, with the bells hanging below it. When I placed the elements on my card - portrait style - it left a large empty space below it. I tried landscape and it didn't look balanced.

Then I had the idea of the holly to fill the void in my first idea, but that didn't look right either! So I moved it to the top and I thought it looked a lot better. 

Once I'd adhered it all in place, I thought the sentiment looked like a white bowl! I adhered a strip of DSP across the top to see if that would help but I don't think it did!

I should have left the sentiment as a  complete oval and put the holly on the oval with the sentiment, although I would probably need a larger oval to take it all or I could cut the holly down.

I'm going to make a video showing how I achieved the black outline around the ivy which has been heat embossed with our Copper Embossing Powder. I will probably re-arrange the elements for the video.

I started my card with a base of our Shimmery White Cardstock, a layer of our new Copper Foil (new Christmas catalogue page 47) and a layer of Candy Cane Lane Designer Series Paper (DSP) (page 5).


Using a piece of our Shimmery White Cardstock, I stamped the sentiment from the Seasonal Bells Stamp Set (page 26) with Versamark and heat embossed with Copper Embossing Powder. I die cut it using our Layering Ovals Framelits Dies and cut it in half, landscape style.

I stamped three bells from the same stamp set, using Versamark onto a piece of our Copper Foil. If you try this, you must use extreme caution because it's so easy for the stamp to go sliding all over the place! I heat embossed with Copper Embossing Powder. 
 
Using another piece of our Shimmery White Cardstock, I stamped and heat embossed three bows and the holly from the Holly Berry Happiness Stamp Set (page 27). I stamped three clusters of holly berries in Archival Black Ink, heat dried it, used the solid berry stamp in Real Red Ink, dipped into Clear Embossing Powder immedaitely and heat embossed. There is a coordinating punch for the bell and also one for the bow and berries. The holly has been fussy cut.


I adhered all the elements to the card with Tombow except for the centre bell which is on Dimensionals.

That's about it for today. Until tomorrowm happy crafting.

JanB.