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

Hi friends, and happy Friday to you! Simon Says Stamp’s DieCember release launched late last night, and it is absolutely cram-jam full of marvelous die cutting fun. One of the best surprises was a collection of dies to coordinate with Tim Holtz cling stamps that are exclusive to Simon Says Stamp! These coordinating dies are Simon-branded, and so are totally exclusive to the Simon Says Stamp store. I created a colorful and sparkling project using the super sweet Tim Holtz Bottle Brush Trees cling stamps + special DieCember Exclusive Simon Says Stamp coordinating dies. Let’s get started with the details!
Just a note: because these Simon-exclusive dies are Simon-branded, they do not count towards the $25 Tim Holtz purchase requirement for the Walter freebie promotion. The Tim Holtz cling stamps with which they coordinate, however, are certainly included with the promotion!!

I began by stamping the Tim Holtz Bottle Brush Trees cling stamps onto some heavyweight vellum using silver sparkle embossing powder. Once I had finished embossing, I used the DieCember Exclusive Simon Says Stamp coordinating dies to die cut each tree. I love that there are so many different heights and widths in both the trees and the bases. The variety is wonderful and creates such amazing projects! I wanted to create the glow of colorful Christmas lights behind the bottle brush trees, and so embossing them on vellum helped to lighten the die cuts a bit to keep them from being too heavy on the colorful background.

After I had heat embossed my sparkling silver trees, I used ink blending brushes to blend Dublin, Tidepool, Cadette, Amethyst, and Taffy Pawsitively Saturated inks onto my panel, keeping the color concentrated in the center and fading out towards the edges of the card front. I have some sparkly silver bottle brush trees on my mantlepiece with colorful Christmas lights right behind them, and the lights create the most spectacular glow and colorful sparkle on the glittery trees! After I’d finished my ink blending, I splattered some sparkling silver watercolors on the background to add an extra bit of magic.

While my background panel was drying, I die cut the Merry word die twice from plain white cardstock and adhered them together to create a dimensional die cut greeting. I only did two versus three layers to keep things a little flatter for mailing, but you could definitely do three layers to add extra dimension! After my panel was completely dry, I adhered the trees using some foam adhesive, hiding the tape behind the solid embossed areas to keep the trees nice and light, like they were floating on the colorful background. I added the die cut greeting directly over the top with some liquid adhesive, and then as a final touch of magical sparkle, I added some twinkling star confetti. I just love how this card came out!!
Well, that’s all for my project today. If you haven’t taken a peek at the new Simon Says Stamp DieCember products, you’re missing out. There are so many fun new products with which to get super creative!! Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the first part of the DieCember Blog Hop. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

I love your background!
Such beautiful work! Thank you.