Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

festive bouquets

Christmas In July Week: Finale in Lime and Royal Blue + SALE!

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

Hi friends! I am back for my final Christmas In July week post, this time featuring a somewhat non-traditional color combination with which I have absolutely fallen in love: lime, royal blue, white, and touches of shining silver. I used this color palette on a holiday card for a catalog earlier this year (in April-yes, holiday products are designed all year round!) and knew that I wanted to incorporate it into this series. I have mentioned before that it’s a bit challenging for me to get into the holiday spirit when it is super hot outside, and so sometimes my color palettes for these off-season cards can be a bit less traditional. I think this color palette certainly fits the festive holiday spirit while still being vibrant and somewhat summery. Let’s get started with the details!

I am always up for any excuse to use my own illustrations, and Festive Bouquets is one that I have not had nearly enough opportunity to utilize since it’s release last year. When coming up with floral bouquets, I try to incorporate unique pairings. For Festive Bouquets, I used anemones paired with hellebore (also called Christmas roses!), ranunculus, berries (a holiday floral staple!), and lots of greenery. Anemones come in tons of different colors, so I started with a vibrant blue anemone as my blue focal point around which I could build my lime green and blue bouquet.

I stamped the hellebore bouquet twice on a panel of white cardstock using alcohol marker-friendly black ink, then used OLO markers to color the pretty blooms. For the lime green hellebores (fashioned after the white hellebores with a lime green center), I selected medium and very pale lime green markers along with the colorless blender marker, adding lime green to the more shadowed areas and blending the edges out with the colorless blender marker. I used a similar technique for the “white” ranunculus bloom, adding a very pale yellow green marker to only the shadowed areas and blending the edges with the colorless blender marker, which leaves the majority of the bloom white. After coloring my holiday bouquets, I die cut them with the coordinating dies.

The two bouquets were perfectly proportioned to bookend a slimline card front, so I trimmed down a 3.5″ x 8.5″ panel of white cardstock and lightly blended some Royal Pawsitively Saturated Ink using a blending brush and splattered the blended area with some sparkling silver glitter watercolors for added festiveness. I popped up the floral die cuts with some foam squares in each corner, then added a holographic silver “frame” by die cutting the A2 Thin Frames and trimming off the longer straight pieces, which I strategically tucked behind the floral bouquets to create the illusion of a frame. For the greeting, I stamped the “joy” sentiment from the Holiday Sparkle Greetings stamp set using the Royal Pawsitively Saturated Ink and die cut it with the coordinating die. I popped the sentiment die cut up with a double layer of foam tape to give it some extra emphasis on the colorful background, finally embellishing the slimline card with some Clear Pawsitively Dazzling Gems.

Isn’t this color combo so beautiful for a holiday card? I am absolutely obsessed!

Now for an extra fun weekend surprise: Simon Says Stamp is offering 20% off of all in-stock Simon Says Stamp Branded products through 7/21/24 at 11:59 ET! Click HERE to see all of the in-stock products available for the discount, then use code SMR24 at checkout to receive 20% off of your Simon-branded products!!

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy shopping!!

Dramatic Black, Red, and Gold for Christmas!

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

Hi friends! I am back with another project using one of my new holiday illustrations for Simon Says Stamp: Festive Bouquets. I was on a roll with the vibrant red lilies when I was coloring a couple of weeks ago; I used OLO markers to create this vivid bouquet for THIS post, but for today’s project, I used Distress Inks to watercolor these bold blooms. Let’s get started with the details!

To start, I heat embossed the lily bouquet from the Festive Bouquets set onto some Fabriano Artistico Cold Press watercolor paper using gold embossing powder. Next, I tapped Barn Door, Aged Mahogany, and Forest Moss Distress Inks onto my palette and picked up the color with my damp paintbrush to add some vibrant watercolor! Once I’d finished watercoloring the images, I tapped Black Soot ink on my palette and did a wash around the edge of the embossed image. I knew that I wanted a black background behind the die cut watercolored image, and adding the black around the edges helps keep the color palette cohesive throughout the project even after die cutting.

After I had finished my watercoloring, I turned to the card base. The lily bouquet in the Festive Bouquets set is quite generously-sized, making it perfect for use with larger card sizes. I trimmed down a panel of Rainbow Splash black to A7 size, then masked around the edges using Satin Masking Tape. I placed the Snow Pattern stencil over the masked area, keeping it in place with a few pieces of washi tape, then spritzed Tim Holtz Mica Spray in Tart Cranberry and Tarnished Brass over the top of the stencil. These beautiful Mica Sprays are opaque enough that they add a subtle shimmer and color to even black cardstock. (Bonus: you can get the super cute Walter the penguin die as a free gift with purchase if you purchase $25 of Tim Holtz product, which includes these fabulous Mica Sprays!)

Once my stenciled pattern had dried and I’d removed the masking tape around the edges, I die cut the A7 Thin Frames dies from Matte Gold Metallic foil cardstock. I always keep my Thin Frames dies wired together, rather than snipping them apart, so that I can create a variety of widths of frames with just one pass through my die cutting machine! I found a frame to cover the edges of the stenciled area and adhered it, then added a slightly larger thinner frame to nest around the outer edge of my stenciled frame. I die cut some Airy Pine Needles using gold glitter cardstock, then added the flowers and pine needles on the top corner of my card using foam adhesive. I added some gold embossed and die cut sentiments from Festive Bouquets using some more foam adhesive, finishing everything off with some matte gold pearl embellishments.

Well, that’s all for my project today! Can you believe that DieCember starts tonight at midnight? I’m so excited to share all of the projects I’ve been creating lately! Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!

Holiday Lilies with Simon Says Stamp!

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

Hi friends! I am back today with another project featuring the lily stamp from my new Festive Bouquets illustrations. When researching flowers for my drawing, I always look at different floral arrangements for weddings and holidays, and I was struck by how frequently large lilies are used in holiday bouquets. I couldn’t remember ever seeing a holiday lily stamp before, so I created a large arrangement to use on your holiday cards and was super fun to color!! Let’s get started with the details on my project.

I began by stamping the lily image from the Festive Bouquets stamp set onto some Hammermill white cardstock using Intense Black ink. I then used OLO markers to create vivid red, almost a bright coral, lilies and lime green foliage. This image would be beautiful in no-line style, as well, but I think that the crisp black lines with the vivid red flowers are such a classic pairing that I couldn’t resist using it for this project. I die cut the image with the coordinating die.

To add some subtle, but still festive, texture behind my floral bouquet, I ran an A2 panel of Hammermill white cardstock through my die cut machine using the new Twining Berries embossing folder. This embossing folder has such classic holiday botanical imagery and added such lovely texture behind my floral bouquet. The only enhancement that I made was to add some shimmering gold watercolor splatters to the embossed panel, though this panel would also be gorgeous colored with your choice of medium!! I added my floral bouquet to the bottom corner of my card front and trimmed off the excess from the edges. To coordinate with the gold splatters on the background, I also added some shimmering gold to the centers of the lilies.

For the sentiment, I heat embossed a greeting from the Graceful Holiday Greetings set onto some black cardstock using gold sparkle embossing powder. I die cut the greeting with the coordinating die, then added a sentiment strip from the CZ Design Typed Christmas Sentiment Strips cards. These cards are printed with toner, so they can be foiled using a Minc or a laminator. Such fun to add that little extra bit of shine! I popped up the greeting pieces on the embossed card front using foam adhesive, then added a few iridescent red gems for extra sparkle.

Well, that’s all for my project today! Simple, elegant, and lots of shimmer and shine to make it extra festive. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Festive Bouquets in Technicolor!

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

Hi friends! The utterly amazing new All the Joy release from Simon Says Stamp is live and I have so many cards to share with you. I was incredibly inspired with nearly everything in this release, but I was so excited to work with my newest stamp designs that I want to share those with you first! Last night, I shared a project using my new Joyful Anemone background stamp, and today I have a pair of technicolor projects using one of the bouquet images from the Festive Bouquets stamp set. This stamp set comes with two different floral arrangements using some traditional and non-traditional holiday florals, as well as a ton of different sentiments. (Did you see that the coordinating die set cuts out the sentiments as well as the large floral bouquets? SO awesome!)

When I was at my crafty retreat a few weeks ago, I stamped and colored these two floral bouquets from Festive Bouquets using my OLO Markers, drawing the vivid color palette from Shiny Brite vintage ornaments, featuring candy apple red anemones, deep royal purple hellebores, cotton candy pink berries, and three different shades of vivid green foliage. The colorful slimline bokeh background from THIS post actually was originally created to use these two floral bouquets, but I couldn’t quite get the arrangement right, so I decided to use that background for a different project and instead create two different coordinating cards, each with that same vibrant color palette!

To coordinate perfectly with the super colorful floral bouquets, I searched amongst my Pawsitively Saturated ink collection and pulled Sprout, Lucky, Ocean, Amethyst, Sweets, Cherry inks. For this first card, I wanted to create an intensely colorful blended background to accent the beautiful colors in the bouquet, so I blended the colors in ROYGBIV order down the front of my A2 card front using blending brushes. I am so in love with how this turned out and am just itching to use the color scheme on another project!!

To accent the floral corner and draw the eye towards the greeting, I die cut some white glitter A2 Thin Frames dies, two of which I layered on a slightly larger piece of vellum. The vellum allows the colors of the background to still be somewhat visible without adding bulk or any additional color to the card. I placed the colorful bouquet in the corner of the die cut rectangles, accenting the arrangement with some iridescent white foil die cuts created using the Forest Border Frame die. You know how those white edges on the die cuts bother me, but the white accents (frame, leaf die cuts) help to counter act that visual annoyance. I stamped and embossed some greeting pieces from the Festive Bouquets using Obsidian pigment ink and clear embossing powder, then popped them up using some foam tape. The final touch was to add a few super sparkly iridescent gems!

My second project uses the same ink colors, this time using the residual ink left over on the ink blending brushes to create this super soft, almost glowing background for my colorful floral arrangement! I simply blended the Sprout, Lucky, Ocean, Amethyst, Sweets, and Cherry ink that was left over on my blending brushes from the previous project. I tried to keep the colors that would blend nicely together near each other so as not to create a muddy mess (think of your color theory). After I had finished blending the background, I spritzed some Iridescent White Shimmer Spray from Hero Arts over the new Stylized Mandala Stencil. It’s difficult to capture the subtle sparkle in photos, but it looks so lovely in real life!

I arranged the floral bouquet and some more iridescent white die cuts from the Forest Border Frame die over the top of the blended and stenciled background, popping the bouquet up with some foam adhesive for extra dimension. I stamped and heat embossed some more greetings from the Festive Bouquets set using Obsidian pigment ink and clear embossing powder, then cut them out with the coordinating dies. (I absolutely love the sentiment dies included in these new sets… they make the finished card look so polished and neat!) A few more iridescent gems finished it off!!

Well, that’s all for today’s projects. I am working my way through the huge pile of cards that I created for this release, so stay tuned, because I have tons more to share with you! Be sure to come back tomorrow for Day 1 of the All the Joy blog hop. We will have prizes and other fun stuff, along with a veritable smorgasbord of inspiration to jumpstart your crafting!! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!