Blue Christmas with Spellbinders!

Hi there! I have been playing with some new (and old!) goodies from Spellbinders, including the absolutely stunning new Nordic Ornaments dies, designed by the super talented Zsoka Marko! These ornaments have a classic feel, with lots of details and tons of ways to customize them to your own tastes. I have a project using the Nordic Ornaments traditionally with all of the layers, and then another project using them as a base for other holiday dies, both featuring a unique blue/navy/silver color palette, with pops of pale peach. Let’s get started with the details!

Both of my cards are an homage to one of my favorite shades of cardstock from Spellbinders: Partly Cloudy. It’s a gorgeous shade of medium blue, that can be made brighter or more muted, depending on which colors are paired with it! Before beginning my cards, I sat down with my Glimmer hot foil machine and some Matte Silver foil to create some accents for the Nordic Ornaments. I foiled the stunning new-ish Plaid Tidings hot foil plate on some of the Partly Cloudy cardstock using Matte Silver. I also hot foiled some sentiments using the Christmas Mailbox Greetings. Because I can’t keep my foil machine out on my desk all the time, I occasionally will spend an hour or two of quality time with my foil plates, Glimmer machine, and foils creating tons of pieces to use now and save for later! I have folders for different companies full of foiled accents, so that I can just grab and go when I’m creating.

My first project features the Nordic Ornaments in their intended design, with the layered dies. I die cut the base layer from some navy blue cardstock, then the large detail layer from some more Partly Cloudy cardstock. I die cut the details from sparkly silver glitter cardstock and Spellbinder’s Barely Peach cardstock. (That is one of the most unique colors of cardstock I’ve seen, and my cardstock collection is, ahem, extensive. If you haven’t checked out Spellbinders’s colored cardstock selection, I highly encourage you to do so!)

After I adhered all of the ornament components together using liquid adhesive, I added a coordinating iridescent blue pearl to the center of the flowers as one more accent of sparkle and textural element. I also matted the sentiment with some more of the navy cardstock used for the base of the ornaments.

I trimmed three strips of the accent cardstocks (navy, silver glitter, and peach) and adhered them to the foiled plaid panel using liquid adhesive, to keep the color scheme cohesive. I arranged the ornaments and greeting on the card front using two different heights of foam adhesive for extra dimension. The foiled plaid background is the perfect accent for these beautifully traditional Nordic Ornaments. You can make these ornaments super festive and unique by utilizing lots of different colors for the different elements, but monochrome is my current favorite color story, so I couldn’t resist. I think it looks so elegant!

My second project features only the base layer of the Nordic Ornaments. That’s some awesome versatility, right? I die cut the base layer of the teardrop shaped ornament from Partly Cloudy cardstock, then used a blending tool to lightly blend some coordinating blue ink around the edges of the ornaments to add a bit of dimension and shape. I also die cut some Christmas Blooms from more of the navy, peach, and silver glitter cardstock, setting them aside to accent the ornaments later!

For my card base, I used the Mosaic Bracket Card Builder dies to create a textured monochromatic card base. I die cut the background from some more of the blue cardstock, then layered it on an A2 card base of the same shade. This tone-on-tone is my favorite way to add texture and interest to a background without adding an extra color to my color palette, which I find to be particularly important when doing a monochromatic card like this.

I matted the foiled sentiment with some more navy blue cardstock, then added a silver glitter “greetings” die cut from the Christmas Mix & Match die set. I arranged the ornaments, holiday flora, and sentiment on the textured blue card base using multiple heights of foam adhesive, then added a few iridescent blue pearls for one last pop of shine.

Well, that’s all for these cards! Spellbinders has been knocking their holiday releases out of the park these last few months. September’s release is absolutely fabulous. You should check it out if you haven’t already! I know that the Nordic Ornaments is currently sold out (but it is in stock at Simon Says Stamp-click HERE), but you can always sign up to be notified when it comes back in stock. One good thing about early holiday crafting is that we have a little time to wait for things to go back in stock!

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!