Hi friends! Can you believe that it’s almost 2024? I am in shock at how quickly the year has flown by us. My little boys are in that toddler stage where they don’t develop new skills as rapidly and don’t have enormous growth spurts like when they were babies, so it feels sometimes like time drags a little… but then it’s like good grief, where did the time go and who are these giant kids in my house?? Anyway, I have some final holiday cards to share with you using some holiday goodies that I purchased from my friends over at Trinity Stamps. They came out with some really marvelous holiday hot foil plates and dies this year, and I couldn’t resist pairing them with some of the fabulous coated papers that I’ve been collecting.
Using coated papers with your hot foil plates either works totally brilliantly or it doesn’t work at all. It’s a risk that I’ve been willing to take, because more often than not, the combination of the smooth coated papers and the shining hot foil works so beautifully that I want to hot foil every single one of my coated cardstocks. When I say “coated,” I mean those “fancy” cardstocks that you might be inclined to hoard (not that I know about hoarding cardstocks… wink, wink…) Think pearlescent and mirror cardstocks; the ones that have the specialty coatings on them to create beautiful texture and shine.
For my first project, I paired some absolutely spectacular pale blush pearlescent cardstock with the Frosty Foiled Flakes Hot Foil Plates and Dies (TS | SSS) and blush foil to create an impeccable tone-on-tone snowflake background. I arranged the different snowflake hot foil plates (love that they’re separated, so that you can use as many or as few as you like!) on my panel of pearlescent blush cardstock and used Blush foil from Spellbinders (SB | SSS) to foil them onto the cardstock. The amount of detail that you can pick up when using the coated papers with these super detailed hot foil plates is unreal. These snowflakes are small and delicate and every single detail worked beautifully with this foil and paper combination! I hot foiled a few extras on a scrap of the pearlescent cardstock so that I could die cut them, as well.
For the greeting, I used the Simply Sentimental Merry (TS | SSS) and Simply Sentimental Christmas (TS | SSS), cutting the detail layer from some shimmering rose gold glitter cardstock and the background from some heavyweight vellum. The vellum layer adds a little stability to these super delicate die cut letters without adding any extra bulk or color to this limited-palette card!
To assemble the card, I trimmed down the background panel slightly, leaving 1/4″ on each side of my pale blush A2 cardstock base. I added the greeting die cuts with some foam adhesive, then popped up some of the individual hot foiled and die cut snowflakes around the sentiment using more foam adhesive. The final touch was a smattering of Ethereal Stones Brilliant Glass Rhinestones for some more texture and sparkle!
My second card features the stunning Retro Baubles Hot Foil Plate (TS | SSS). I used Champagne Satin hot foil (SB | SSS) to foil these beautiful retro Christmas ornament images onto a panel of vivid magenta mirror cardstock. You could always hot foil this onto regular cardstock and use your favorite medium to add a more colorful feel to the background; I was simply so delighted with the look of the matte metallic hot foil on the mirror cardstock that I didn’t think it needed any further color! I trimmed the panel down on top and bottom and added some sparkling champagne glitter cardstock (PFS | SSS) to each section and mounted them to an A2 card base.
For the greeting, I used the Simply Sentimental Merry (TS | SSS) and Simply Sentimental Christmas (TS | SSS), cutting the detail layer from some coordinating deep magenta cardstock and the background from some more of the champagne glitter cardstock (PFS | SSS). I love the juxtaposition of the elegant script “merry” with the simple serif “Christmas.”
After I had popped the greeting die cuts up on the card front using foam adhesive, I used the Trinity Pickup Stick (TS | SSS) to add the gorgeous new Treasure Chest Brilliant Glass Rhinestones to some of the patterns on the individual baubles. The Trinity Pickup Stick (TS | SSS) to precisely add the baubles to the ornaments!
I just love how these cards came out; I think that they would be fairly easy to mass produce since there’s no coloring or ink blending on them. I hope you don’t mind my sharing a few final holiday cards even though it’s technically after Christmas. I am leaving my tree up at least until Epiphany. I just love the glow of the pretty lights!
Well, that’s all for my projects today! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!
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