Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

inside christmas greetings

White Winter Village for Christmas!

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

Hi friends! As you might have noticed, tone-on-tone is a favorite “technique” of mine. I think it creates such a dramatic and elegant effect, and holiday cards are certainly the perfect excuse for drama and elegance! The beautiful Winter Village dies from the Season of Wonder release from Simon Says Stamp were the perfect product to use for a monochromatic white holiday card, adding in a few special tricks to make all of the elements stand out individually as well as work together for the entirety of the card! Let’s get started with the details.

To start, I die cut the Winter Village dies (which are currently out of stock, so be sure to sign up for email notification for when they come back in stock!!) from some iridescent white mirror cardstock. I am always on the lookout for unique specialty papers whenever I am shopping, because the specialty papers really make these monochromatic projects pop. The unique texture of this iridescent white mirror cardstock helps the die cuts stand out from the rest of the white on the project!

For the background, I wanted something soft and simple, but still captured the holiday mood of the sweet little houses, so I heat embossed the Soft Plaid background using Hero Arts White Satin Pearl embossing powder on white cardstock. This pearlescent embossing powder is a workhorse in my craft room; it creates beautiful pearlescent tone-on-tone embossing and can also be used to create custom embossing powder looks by stamping your image or sentiment in colored ink, then using your MISTI to stamp it again with embossing ink and adding the White Satin Pearl embossing powder. I used this technique to create the sentiment for my card today. I stamped the greeting from Inside Greetings Christmas using Flannel Pawsitively Saturated ink, then again with embossing ink, finally adding the White Satin Pearl embossing powder to create a soft pearlescent gray embossed greeting. This pearlescent gray is a bit softer than typical silver embossing powder… I love that you can create custom embossing colors with one simple addition to your craft stash!

I trimmed down my plaid background panel and matted it on a full size A2 card front with liquid adhesive. To help my village stand out a bit from the white background, I die cut a vellum circle using the circleThin Frames die. This softens the plaid pattern on the background so that the shiny white village can stand out as the focal point. I adhered the embossed sentiment strip to the bottom of the vellum circle, then arranged the village die cuts above it using the sentiment strip as a guide to keep things straight. I adhered the vellum circle to the plaid background by hiding my adhesive behind the solid die cuts!

Well, that’s all for my project today! If you’ve never tried doing a monochromatic white card, take this as your sign to try it out. It’s so fun to mix and match textures and patterns to create interest on your monochromatic cards! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Songs of the Season: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day…

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

Merry Christmas in July, friends! I am always so bummed when the holiday season is over and I have to put away my holiday stamps, dies, and hot foil plates in favor of non-holiday images. Companies just keep coming out with wonderful new products each year, and sometimes I don’t even have time to use them all, so they sit in my bins and wait hopefully for the following year’s holiday cardmaking season. To rectify this sad situation, I have decided that I am going to post a distinctly holiday-themed card on the 25th of each month to give me more opportunity to use my supplies and get a head start on my holiday cardmaking.

I wanted to come up with a name for this series, similar to the “Get Cracking on Christmas” series that my friend Jenn Shurkus shares each month, and thought to myself what is my favorite part about the holidays? The food, the gifts, the decor, the generally festive and happy feelings that the holidays evoke… all are individually wonderful pieces that, when put together, make the holiday season as a whole such a special time. But as a child, I was most influenced by the music of the Christmas season. In a past life, I earned a Master’s of Music in vocal performance, due in no small part to the impact that holiday music made on my life. As a young teenager, I wanted to sing the Messiah, the traditional Christmas carols, the popular secular pieces like White Christmas… Singing these familiar pieces on my own and during my voice lessons gave me the opportunity to practice different vocal techniques and styles, from classical oratorio arias to crooning ballads, and listening to those pieces (and singing along whenever possible) made the holiday season truly begin for me. So, my new holiday series is going to be based on the Songs of the Season. Each month, I will select a different holiday musical piece to use as my inspiration for my project.

This month, I have selected a favorite: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, specifically the Johnny Cash version. The simple melody (and his equally simple vocal technique) is enhanced to perfection by the simple guitar accompaniment and female backup singers. You can listen to this version HERE on YouTube. His voice is simple, but it resonates with me, reminding me of long car rides in the cold to visit family, tightly wrapped in my coat, perhaps cuddling a new doll or clasping a new purse or book. For my projects today, I started by creating those bells using the Bell dies from Simon Says Stamp. Let’s get started with the details on my projects!

For both of my cards today, I kept the colors intense, but still somewhat muted, with a deep cranberry, pine, and minty green with shimmering rose gold accents. Both projects feature a deep cranberry card front that I first embossed using the Pine Bouquet Embossing Folder. To enhance the beautiful embossed details, I first blended some Redwood ink around the edges with a blending brush, then gently swiped the Rose Gold Pigment Ink pad from Altenew over the raised areas. This beautiful rose gold metallic ink highlights the details so perfectly! The foam pad is not too firm, with just the right amount of springiness to allow this technique to work beautifully. I also splattered the backgrounds with some handmade metallic watercolors to create many levels of sparkle and dimension on the background!

My first project is a fairly literal representation of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. I wanted to create a cluster of ringing bells, decorated with some sprigs of holiday foliage and a how. I die cut the Bell dies twice using Brushed Rose Metallic Cardstock, adhering all of the layers with both liquid and foam adhesive to create extra dimension.

To accent the ringing bells, I die cut some holiday greenery using the Etched Berry Branch die and the Fir Branches die. I cut the berry branch from Simon Says Stamp’s Midnight Green cardstock and the fir branches from a lighter shade of green to allow some contrast between the two styles. I accented the berries on the berry branches with some blush pearls to coordinate with the rose gold bells. I also die cut a double bow using the bow die from the Pinkfresh Studio Wrap Around Elements die set, layering the two die cuts together to create a very full bow.

I arranged all of the different die cut elements on my embossed card front using both liquid and foam adhesives for tons of dimension on the textured background. I die cut a Fancy Happy Holidays from the same shimmering white cardstock used for the bow cluster and heat embossed a greeting from Inside Greetings: Christmas using rose gold embossing powder. I popped the greetings up on the card front using foam tape. So much dimension and so many fun individual elements on this card!

My second card uses up some of the leftovers from the first. Before beginning a card heavily laden with botanical die cuts, I always cut a bunch of the elements before building the arrangement. I frequently end up with leftovers, which just gives me an excuse to make another card! I also wanted to use another of the beautiful sentiments from the Inside Greetings: Christmas. Several of them are large enough and have beautiful designs that they can be focal points on a card front. I heat embossed one of the greetings onto a rectangle of the same deep cranberry cardstock that I used for the embossed card base using rose gold embossing powder. The contrast between the light metallic rose gold embossing powder with the deep maroon cardstock is gorgeous!

I assembled the card with both liquid and foam tape to ensure lots of dimension. I love that the sentiment stamp is large enough to stand on its own amongst the busy background. I tucked the leftover bits of foliage around the sentiment and added a few more blush pearls to accent the rose gold color scheme.

Well, that’s all for this month’s edition of Songs of the Season! As we head into the holiday crafting season, there will be plenty more holiday inspiration, but until then, you can check back here on the 25th of each month to get your Christmas card fix. Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!