Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

frosty foiled flakes

Hot Foil on Coated Papers with Trinity Stamps- More Christmas Cards!

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!

Belated Songs of the Season: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

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

Hi friends! I know that I am a couple of days late for this month’s installment of Songs of the Season, but Thanksgiving and all of the family festivities surrounding it made me lose track of the date! This month, I’ve created a project using one of my all-time favorite holiday songs as inspiration: “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” from Meet Me In St. Louis. As someone who grew up 20 minutes outside of St. Louis, this movie has always been dear to my heart. It follows the Smith family right at the turn of the 20th century, when, and I quote, St. Louis was “the center of the entire universe!” for the 1904 World’s Fair. The movie takes place over the course of a full year, but somehow, I feel like it is a Christmas movie. The moment when John Truitt surprises Esther behind the Christmas tree at the ball in his tuxedo and they gracefully waltz out together will never not give me butterflies. Esther’s elegant ruby red velvet dress, large silky hairbows, and touches of sparkle seemed to me to be the height of holiday elegance as a child who loved playing dress up and watching historical movies for the fashion as much as for the story.

You can watch the scene with Judy Garland’s classic version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” above or HERE on YouTube. For my card, I tried to pull in several different textural and thematic elements present in the scene: the luxurious red velvet, the silky coat, the snowflakes, the holiday greenery adorning the house, etc.

Today’s card finally gave me an excuse to use a technique that I’ve had in my head for over a year: shiny red foiled snowflakes on Simon Says Stamp Rich Red Matte Metallic foil cardstock. I used shiny Red Glimmer foil to hot foil the Trinity Frosty Foiled Plates snowflakes onto an A2 panel of Rich Red Matte Metallic foil cardstock. The contrast between the shiny foiled snowflakes and the super smooth, brushed red foil cardstock is just enough to create a subtle texture and pattern on the background panel. I am totally in love with this technique and want to try it on everything!!

Throughout the movie, the young ladies adorn their coiffures with huge bows, as was the style in 1904. To emulate this, I die cut the Giant Gift Bow die from Pawsitively Velvet red cardstock, popping up the top layer with foam adhesive to give extra dimension and create a shadow to allow it to be more visible. I also die cut some foliage from the Berry Stems dies, arranging them behind the bow to create a festive, elegant, and traditional holiday greenery arrangement.

After I had finished arranging the bow and greenery, I heat embossed a greeting from the Graceful Holiday Greetings set onto some heavyweight vellum using white embossing powder. I popped the greeting up with clear foam adhesive, nestling it amongst the holiday foliage. Finally, I added a few sparkling red gems for one last elegant touch of sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my project for this month’s Songs of the Season. I can’t believe that Christmas is less than a month away! The Songs of the Season series won’t be going anywhere, though, because I love Christmas no matter what month it is. 🙂

Just a reminder: you can get this absolutely adorable freebie with any $25 purchase of Tim Holtz brand products. Here’s a little tag that I created using Walter:

Isn’t he just the cutest? This set is only available at Simon Says Stamp while supplies last, so don’t wait! If you’re new to Tim Holtz, I can’t recommend the Distress Inks highly enough. They are water reactive and marvelous for watercoloring, so if you’re a colorist like me, you definitely ought to check them out. The color palette is wide-ranging and so, so beautiful.

Well, that’s all for me today. Thanks so much for stopping by, and be sure to check back later this week as we dive in headfirst for DieCember! It’s going to be an amazing month! Have a marvelous day!