This post is sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!
Hi friends. I know that we are in full-blown holiday mode around here, so I don’t really need to do a Songs of the Season post for October (it’s my excuse for playing with my holiday supplies all year round, ha!)… but I really love the inspiration that the Songs of the Season series brings to my creative process, so I couldn’t let the month pass without a new installment to the series! This month, we’re focusing on a beautiful song from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: Silver and Gold, sung by Burl Ives. Listen to it below:
Christmas always conjures plenty nostalgia for me (I would imagine that to be true for most people), as my childhood Christmas memories are some of my most cherished. We had a VHS tape of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, as well as Frosty, Mickey’s Christmas, Garfield’s Christmas, and a few other child-friendly holiday videos that were on repeat for most of December. As an adult and a parent, I now find some of the themes in the Rudolph story to be a bit sad and not necessarily ideals to which I want my children to subscribe, but the music is still something that I cherish, including the song Silver and Gold. Both of my cards today were inspired by that piece, so let’s get started with the details!
Both of my projects feature the beautifully detailed Snowflake Season stamp set from Simon Says Stamp. This is an older set, but the elegance and detail of these snowflake stamps is absolute perfection. I wanted to showcase these beautiful details with some sparkling metallic embossing powder to create gorgeous, festive holiday cards!
I began my first project by heat embossing nearly all of the snowflakes from the Snowflake Season set onto some heavyweight vellum using gold glitter embossing powder and silver glitter embossing powder, then die cutting them with the coordinating dies. The vellum allows the snowflakes to “float” on the card front so gracefully!
I wanted to create a larger A7 card, so I die cut the A7 Thin Frames dies from some brushed gold foil cardstock. (I keep my Thin Frames dies connected so that I can get tons of frame die cuts in various sizes and thicknesses with just one pass through my die cut machine! I save the extras for a rainy day, which makes it super easy to add one to my projects!) I blended some Gravel ink around the edges of my white A7 card front, then splattered the blended areas with some shimmering metallic gold watercolor, keeping the center of the card front nice and clean. I adhered one of the shiny gold frames to the card front using liquid adhesive.
With the conflict and violence currently happening in the Middle East, I have had the phrase “peace on earth, goodwill to men” stuck in my head, and wanted to use it on a project to try to send some peaceful energy into the world. This large A7 card was the perfect size for the generously-sized Peace on Earth Script die, which I die cut from some glittery gold cardstock and backed with a vellum background layer to soften it and add stability to the delicate sentiment die cut. I adhered it to the center of my framed, blended panel using clear foam adhesive, then bracketed the greeting with the glittery vellum snowflake die cuts. I added a few glittering Sparkle and Shine Ombré Glitter Drops from Pinkfresh Studio to fill in the gaps and add one last touch of “silver and gold”!
My second card was borne out of an idea that came to me while working with the vellum for my first card… I love the look of embossed vellum and thought it would be a beautiful background for one of the intricate snowflakes in the Snowflake Season set. What luck that the snowflakes on the Filigree Snowflakes Embossing Folder match the Snowflake Season images so perfectly! But, to allow the embossed vellum to be as much the star of the card as the glittering embossed snowflake image, I used it as a window for my background, so that the details of the embossed image would not be lost and, when standing up, would allow the vellum to create a soft glow! I embossed a panel of vellum using the Filigree Snowflakes Embossing Folder and used my Fiskars trimmer to cut a window from the front of my A2 card base. (A rectangle die would also have done the job, but my cutting plates are pretty beaten up, and I didn’t want to ruin the inside of my card!)
I adhered the embossed vellum panel to the back of the window using super strong double-sided tape, creating a beautiful lacy window to enhance my card front. I heat embossed the largest individual snowflake from Snowflake Season using gold glitter embossing powder and die cut it with the coordinating die. I popped up the snowflake with foam adhesive to give it extra height on my embossed background. For the greeting, I selected a simple sentiment from the Typed Christmas Sentiment Strips pack. Because these sentiment strip panels are printed with toner, they can be foiled using a Minc machine and rolls of heat-reactive foil! I used some gold foil to create a coordinating gold sentiment strip, again with that theme of “peace” that feels so apropos right now. I popped it up using a double layer of foam tape to help it pop even more from the intricate snowflake background, then added some more Sparkle and Shine Ombré Glitter Drops to the tips of the snowflake for one last fun textural element!
Well, that’s all for the October 2023 installment of Songs of the Season. I hope you will join me in praying for and wishing for peace throughout our world. This year has seen so much violence and destruction in so many places that my heart hurts with it. It is such a comfort to have a creative outlet, and I’m so grateful. The world can use all of the love and peaceful energy it can get, I think! Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!
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