Snowflake Notecards Swap Done

Last night I decided to experiment with Translucent Embossing Paste and Glitter. The results didn't turn out like I had hoped but I might still be able to use the cards. I should have used the Opaque Embossing Paste with Glitter which I will do tonight. Because of the lack of success with the experiment, I decided to finish my Snowflake Cards this morning rather than last night. I find that I am much more creative in the morning when I wake up early. At night, I find that I am better at assembling cards because all I have to do is focus on the task rather than be creative.

So this morning, I decided that I needed to finish my snowflake swap requirements. I am only required to send two cards so I decided to send an extra card. I took the two cards that I wasn't particularly happy with (the lavender and pink cards) and added a vellum snowflake overlay that was printed with "Season's Greetings" in a grey colored script. On the inside of the card, I placed a sheet of nice quality text weight paper. I joined all of the pieces with a silver organza bow that is tied on the crease. I am much more happy with the final cards.

The second design is a multiple matted silver snowflake. My swap partner's favorite color is purple. So I took duplex card stock with lavender and dark brown and used that as the base card. I then layered the front of the card with purple metallic paper, a silver metallic textured matt, a chocolate brown textured matt and the embossed snowflake on the lavender colored card that is the inside of the base card. Even though it is simple, I really like this card and color combination.

For the matching envelopes, I took white envelopes and dry embossed a snowflake on each one. Unfortunately, the scan couldn't show the results of the dry embossing. It is very subtle but I will definitely use this idea during this holiday season.

All I have to do now is send them out and hope that my swap partner likes them.


Snowflake Swap Card #1


Snowflake Swap Card #2


Snowflake Swap Card #3

Up to my Elbows in Snowflakes

I am in a snowflake notecard swap. I am responsible for making two different snowflake cards and sending them to my swap partner. We have been challenged to move away from the "traditional" white snowflake and toward something different--different colors, etc.

My swap partner likes the color purple so I thought that I would do something with that and I decided to get out my embossing paste and brass stencils to see what I could come up with. I always have a problem working with embossing paste because it always gets underneath the stencil or I don't get the correct amount of coverage. I have used everything from credit cards to offset spatulas. I finally decided to use the plastic rib that I use when making decorative boxes and it worked perfectly. As for the stencil, I use the old screenprinting tip of taping off the area and putting the ink on the tape and dragging the ink over the image. I decided to use blue painter's tape to tape down the stencil and applying the embossing paste to the tape and it worked quite well. The only adjustment I had to make was to put the adhesive side of the tape on my clothes before applying it to the card and stencil. Without doing so, the tape was marring my cardstock.

As with any new project, I work on separates (pieces of cardstock that can then be used individually as parts of a card) and directly on cards.

Here are some of the pieces that I have so far. In a future post, I will show the final cards. I do have to say that I really like the fuchsia and silver combination. The lavender and silver look nice too. The light pink and silver is my least favorite.

I really like this color combination

More separates. I think that I might mount these on brown cardstock.

These are regular cards rather than cardstock.