The Festival of Lights with Simon Says Stamp!

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

Hi friends! I was recently asked to create some Hanukkah cards using the Light the Menorah set from Simon Says Stamp’s Season of Wonder release, and I’ll be honest… I was a little nervous. I don’t really have much, if any, experience with Hanukkah, so I was afraid of being disrespectful of the imagery and general feeling behind the holiday. But I received some inspiration photos from a friend and used those as my starting point for my cards today, focusing on pale blue and shimmering gold. Let’s get started with the details!

For my first project, I started by heat embossing the beautiful Talavera Vine cling stamp from Simon Says Stamp onto some Harbor cardstock from Concord and 9th using Hero Arts Iridescent Gold embossing powder. The shining gold embossing powder contrasts beautifully with the pale blue cardstock. I trimmed the panel down and placed it on full sized A2 panel of a slightly darker blue cardstock, separating the two pieces with a thin strip of gold foil cardstock.

Next, I heat embossed a greeting and the menorah image from Simon Says Stamp’s Light the Menorah set, again on Harbor cardstock from Concord and 9th using Hero Arts Iridescent Gold embossing powder. I added some light blue Copic marker to the candles and some gold sparkle pen to the flames of the candles. I die cut the finished images using the coordinating dies, then popped them up using foam adhesive. To accent the color scheme and add some additional texture to my card front, I added some sparkly gold twine and iridescent aquamarine gems.

For my second card, I created a custom background panel by stamping several sizes of the 6 point star included in the Light the Menorah set using Harbor Ink on Harbor cardstock to create a subtle tone-on-tone patterned paper. I also blended the Harbor Ink lightly around the edges using a blending brush and splattered some metallic gold watercolor on the background for extra texture and sparkle. I die cut the A2 Thin Frames dies from a pale gold shimmer cardstock that I found in my stash and added a thicker and thinner frame to my card front. (I leave my frame dies intact, rather than snipping them apart, so that I can get multiple sizes and thicknesses of frame with one pass through my die cut machine!)

For the greeting, I stamped two of the sentiments and the flame from the Light the Menorah set on Harbor cardstock and embossed them using Iridescent Gold embossing powder. I die cut the images with the coordinating dies, adding some more gold sparkle pen to the flame of the candle. I popped the images up on my card front using foam adhesive, then added some gold foil Star of David die cuts from the 5 Stars dies set. Finally, I added a few more aquamarine gems for more sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my projects today. I hope that I was able to create these cards in a respectful way of both the Jewish culture and the Hanukkah celebration. If you are Jewish and you see something that I should have/could have done differently, please feel free to email me and educate me! I am always willing to learn! Thank you so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!