Frosty Christmas Window by Anna-Karin Evaldsson
Hi friends! Happy Tuesday and just over a WEEK before Christmas! We hope this jolly and festive make inspires you this holiday season! Please join me in welcoming back special guest Anna-Karin Evaldsson as our special guest with this wonderful mixed media project! Be sure to read on for more details on how to recreate it for yourself, and enjoy!
Hi everyone! I am so happy to be here with a new tutorial, a Christmas window which can be displayed on a shelf or hang in a real window. December is here and with it comes colder weather and of course also Christmas crafting.
I like to make my own Christmas decorations and they are great gifts too. For this project, I built a little scene using mainly Tim Holtz idea-ology pieces. I wanted to add parcels to the scene, but the stamps that I had at home were all too large. The problem was solved with Simon Says Stamp Shrink Sheets, making the parcels the perfect size for the project. I am very fond of creating snow for projects and here I used one of my favorite methods for that: texture paste, glitter and mica flakes.
- Start by gluing a transparency to one of the windows in the Tim Holtz Christmas Baseboards and Transparencies set. I used Simon Says Stamp Craft Glue.
- Apply Glossy Accents to the windows. I placed it in the corners and as icicles down the windows. Add some Ranger Mica Flakes and then cover the rest of the glue with Rock Candy Glitter. Set aside to dry.
- Apply a thick layer of Ranger Opaque Texture Paste to the top of the window, Santa’s hat, a lamp post and a sign post. The sign post comes from Tim’s Halloween Baseboard set and so does the wood planks that were used to build the window shelf. Glue two wood planks together and then glue the page to the bottom of the window.
- Stamp the parcel from Tim Holtz Home For Christmas on a Simon Says Stamp Shrink Sheet with Stazon Jet Black ink.
- Color at the back with Ranger’s Alcohol inks. If you color over the stamped image, the ink will smear. Later, I discovered that the parcels got too dark after shrinking and wiped off some of the ink to make them lighter. You need to do this before shrinking the shapes.
- Shrink according to the instructions on the packaging. Here you can see how much smaller the parcels become. You can also see that the brown and the blue parcels got a bit too dark.
- Cover the back of the parcels with Star Dust Stickles. Let dry. When the Stickles is dry, paint the back of the parcels with white paint. I forgot to take a photo of that step.
- When the paint on the back is dry, turn the parcels around and coat them with Glossy Accents. Set aside to dry. The Glossy Accents give a shiny finished look to the parcels.
- Cover Baubles and a candy cane with glue and then coat them with Rock Candy Glitter.
- Apply a thick layer of texture paste to the shelf and press the baubles, candy cane and parcels into the paste. The paste acts as a glue. Sprinkle with Mica Flakes and then cover everything with Rock Candy Glitter.
- The white paint at the back help the parcels to stand out from the background.
- Add a sentiment from Tim’s Christmas Sticker Book to the sign post.
- The snow is very sparkly and the mica flakes look like shards of ice.
- Icicles are created with Glossy Accents and Rock Candy on the acetate windows.
- Even the candy cane sparkles. Adding a shelf to the window gives you space for dimensional items and makes it easy to adhere them.
I hope this project inspired you to make sparkly Christmas decorations and to try out Shrink Sheets. Thank you so much for looking! Happy crafting! –Anna-Karin
SUPPLIES:
|
Thanks so much for stopping by, and to Anna-Karin for being our guest!
Pop that Cork! Using Die Cut Words as a Background: EZ with CZ
Hi friends! Happy Monday! Please join me in welcoming special monthly Guest *CZ herself*, Cathy Zielske in the latest of our EZ with CZ blog series! Be sure to watch the video to learn all the details on this cute card and enjoy!!
Hey everyone, it’s Cathy Zielske back with another installment of EZ with CZ. Today I’m using a fun celebratory die to create a tone on tone textured background along with one shiny gold version to make the card really pop, pun intended.
This is a fun way to stretch your supplies and get more use out of word die cuts. When you use the same color cardstock for your background and your words, it creates a very cool textured look. I’m using my Pop That Cork die set to create a fun New Year’s card, plus I have some EZ Strips for my subgreeting that work perfectly with this word die.
Here is my tutorial showing you how this card came together.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
Think of all the possibilities to put your word dies to use in new ways!
Give this technique a try today! Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you back here with a new installment of EZ with CZ next month.
SUPPLIES:
|
Thanks so much for stopping by, and thanks to CZ for being our guest!
Did You Know? December 2024 Edition!
Hello crafters, it’s Nina-Marie Trapani here with you! Today I have a new edition of our popular Did You Know series!
With it being DieCember® (our month-long celebration of dies!), I felt it was only fitting to focus this month’s feature on die cutting. I’m going to showcase a few of my favorite die cutting tools and techniques in this post—and I hope you are inspired by what I will be sharing!
EZ Strips Sentiments and Die!
Who doesn’t love products that make our lives so much easier? Our newest line of sentiment strip products called EZ Strips are a crafter’s dream! The EZ Strip die coordinates with any of our EZ Strips branded sentiment strips and allows you to cut out the ENTIRE sheet of greetings in one pass of your die cut machine. This makes creating a breeze!
Once you die cut all your EZ Strips, we recommend storing them inside one of our Simon Says Stamp Clear Storage Pockets! They can fit full sized sheets, plus the cut pieces you have yet to use. And with the pockets being clear, you can easily see what’s inside.
Ink Blending Die Cuts on a Craft Tacky Mat!
Do you love to color die cuts with ink blending but find yourself constantly bending your intricate little pieces? Our Simon Says Stamp Pawsitively Perfect Craft Tacky Mat is the perfect surface to hold your die cuts in place as you work—the tacky surface also keeps them flat so as you blend over top it eliminates the problem of die cuts getting bent. The 8×8 sized mat fits beautifully on top of our Simon Says Stamp Magnetic Glass Mat (as does the Small Craft Tacky Mat!), which is a great surface to stick it to!
New Cardstock Colors—Perfect for Die Cutting!
We love die cutting cardstock—and how awesome are the new colors we have added to our Simon Says Stamp collection?! There are 6 new shades, including Creamsicle, Honey, Sage, Steel, Eggplant, and Rainforest. All of them are high-quality cardstock and die cut beautifully—even with the most intricate of dies!
Pawsitively Perfect Craft Pad + Place and Pierce Tool!
When you are die cutting, it’s REALLY helpful to have a surface you can work on to “weed” your die cuts. All those little inner pieces of the die cut can be tricky to remove without bending your delicate paper. But the Pawsitively Perfect Craft Pad and Place and Pierce tool combine together to form a powerful duo! The Craft Pad is a soft surface that you can use under your die cut to remove the inner pieces; the spongy material gives a little as you press into it, preventing the die cuts from getting bent. The Place and Pierce tool is the device that you’ll use to press the inner pieces out of the die cut. Be sure to watch our quick tip video below to learn more about these two awesome tools!
SUPPLIES
|
