A Bright Christmas with Simon Says Stamp!

This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!

Hi friends! Since I’ve been making holiday cards since early summer, I have been listening to Christmas music to put me in the holiday mentality. But, now that the weather is starting to cool down a bit and Halloween is almost over (thank goodness), I feel like it’s high time I get to enjoy my holiday decor! I put up my office Christmas tree over the weekend, and I am so happy that I did! It’s a white tree, with warm white lights, and filled with rose gold and blush ornaments. This is my tree, so I took the liberty to make it as frilly and girly as I wanted, with ribbons, flowers, sparkles, and pink!! Our family tree will be a little more traditional, with colorful lights and a mishmash of ornaments belonging to all six of us. Much less elegant, much more colorful and family-oriented. I love the look of bokeh, especially with Christmas lights. I think that it captures the magic of Christmas lights so perfectly, and so I wanted to create a holiday lights-inspired project using the Bokeh Lights Stencils from Simon Says Stamp. Let’s get started with the details!

To start, I trimmed down a panel of white cardstock to slightly smaller than slimline size, approximately 3.25″ x 8.25″. I then used Simon Says Stamp Blending Brushes to lightly blend Pawsitively Saturated Inks in shades of Sprout, Lucky, Ocean, Amethyst, Sweets, and Cherry around the edge of the panel. I used these colors as a guide for color placement when blending those same ink shades using the Bokeh Lights Stencils.

The Bokeh Lights Stencils are a typical 6×6 stencil set, not really oriented for a slimline card size, but because the pattern is somewhat nebulous and unspecific, I was able to fudge it a little and create a unique background pattern by blending the majority of the bokeh design once, then shifting the stencil up slightly towards the other end of the panel and blending again. I used the colors blended around the edges as a guide for which colors to use with the stencils; because the stencils are transparent, I was able to see which color to use quite easily. After I’d finished creating the stenciled bokeh background, I splattered the background with some sparkling, iridescent watercolors to add even more magic to the overall aesthetic.

Next, I die cut the wires for the Twinkly Lights die set using some matte holographic cardstock from the Assorted Holographic cardstock, then die cut the individual lights using plain white cardstock. I selected Copic marker colors that closely matched the shades of ink that I’d used to blend the background and colored each white bulb die cut.

After coloring and assembling my strings of Christmas lights, I adhered them to my blended and stenciled background panel using liquid adhesive. I die cut a greeting using the CZ Design Merry die from some mirror foil in the Assorted Holographic cardstock set, backing the detail layer with a vellum outline layer. I also trimmed down a sentiment from a sentiment card set that, sadly, seems to be retired. The sentiments in the Christmas Greetings Sentiment Cards would work similarly well, though! After popping up both of my sentiment pieces with foam adhesive, I added some Trinity Stamps Rainbow Reflection gems to add one last touch of festive sparkle to this card and mounted the blended panel on a full-size slimline card front.

Well, that’s all for my project today! I loved this color combination so much that I ended up using it for two more cards for an upcoming release. It’s so bright and festive!! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!