Saturday, 23 November 2019

Polar Bear Christmas Card

Hello my crafty friends

I'm back today with another card for the Fun Friday Challenge #127 at Your Next Stamp, which is Mad for Plaid. So fun, right? Plaid is VERY trendy right now and I'm in love with Buffalo Plaid at the moment. You can find all the details for the challenge HERE.

I don't like to waste pretty paper - and by that I mean hide an entire portion of pretty paper behind another layer. Which is what happened with the buffalo plaid panel for this card. I had needed a large plaid panel for another card, but realized that most of it would be hidden by the elements I was adding. So I used the YNS Stitched Rectangle die to cut the centre of the large panel and put it aside. I finished that card, and then had this lovely stitched plaid rectangle which was the inspiration for this card!


The stitched snowflake die set is one I added to my collection last year and I'm so glad I did. I have really been enjoying them for my holiday cards again this year.  I am still working on using up the Comfort & Joy patterned paper package, which also had stickers and elements - so I added the plaid label sticker to the top of my stitched buffalo plaid panel. I was going to stamp right on the label, but since I have these nifty Simple Strip stamp & dies from Taylored Expressions I added sentiment from the little bag of holiday sentiments I now have ready to go. More on that later.***


This bear - oh, how I adore this bear! I cut the head and front from the same white pearlized card stock as the snowflakes, and the back layer plus muzzle from plaid white card stock. I love the subtle shading this gives the bear. I managed to get this bear die set last year after the holidays, but now I don't know why it took me so long to use it. I guess I was waiting to use it for my holiday cards but I think he would make a cute black bear too which will be great for masculine cards!

Once I got this bear made though - I immediately put the card aside and made 5 more polar bears to have on hand.


Inside I stamped a greeting on a matted stitched rectangle (from YNS) and added one of the elements from the package.


One more holiday card for the stash!

***Taylored Expressions came out with this fun idea called Simple Strips. It is a sheet of red rubber sentiments for specific theme. I have the Birthday and the Christmas stamps. You stamp that single large stamp onto your choice of card stock using your choice of ink colours - or embossing ink if you are stamping on black card stock to emboss with white etc) and you have a whole sheet of different stamped sentiments with one shot! But to save you from having to trim each of those apart and keep the edges straight there is also a coordinating die. After you stamp (and emboss if desired) your sentiments, you line up the die and run it through your machine ... and you are left with a whole pile of perfectly stamped, perfectly cut sentiment strips! Now there is a little bit of a learning curve, which surprised me and with my machine I did have to use a shim to get the strips to cut cleanly but I am loving having a whole pile of sentiments ready to add to cards. When I run out it's easy peasy to stamp and die cut another bunch.

Supplies:
Patterned paper, stickers and elements - Comfort & Joy, My Minds Eye
Polar bear die - Marianne Designs
White shimmer card stock
Pink, black and white card stocks
Sketch - OWH #33
Holiday cheer - Mini Strips Christmas, stamp and die - Taylored Expressions
Sakura white gel pen
Stitched snowflake dies - Lawn Fawn
Nuvo Drops
Stitched Rectangle die - Your Next Stamp
Words inside - More Merry Messages, Stampin' Up

Card size - standard A2 (4.25 x 5.5")

Thanks for stopping by today

1 comment:

  1. that is definitely an adorable polar bear, I also have been having fun with the TE sentiment strips. Fabulous card

    ReplyDelete

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