Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

photo card

Holiday Card Hustle, Day 7!

Good morning! Today is the final day of the Holiday Card Hustle. Are you feeling the time crunch yet? I certainly am…. Holiday preparatory chaos is my life at the moment. For today’s card, and I think my favorite card of the series, I used some absolutely stunning dies from Ellen Hutson as my focal point for my card (aside from my little darlings, of course). The black and white photo was a perfect match for the black and white and chartreuse color scheme I saw in my head. Let’s get started with the details!

To start, I stamped a panel of plain white card stock with the Concord and 9th Plaid stamp set (C9|EH|SSS)  using black and bright green ink. Isn’t that combo just lovely? I don’t use green enough as a main color. I trimmed it down and die cut an oval from the center using the Hero Arts Oval Infinity Dies (HA|SSS) and backed the plaid panel with my black and white photo, then matted it on a piece of black card stock, all of which was mounted on an A7 panel of Hero Arts Woodgrain card stock (HA|EH|SSS).

For the holiday bouquet, I used the absolutely gorgeous Poinsettia and Pine standalone die set. I die cut the pieces from white, black, and green card stock, then arranged them in a cluster in the corner of my plaid panel. For the greeting, I added a die cut “Believe” from Altenew’s Holiday Script dies (ALT|EH|SSS) cut from festive green card stock.

This is definitely my favorite project from this week. That plaid just screams Christmas, and with the lovely bouquet… it’s so rustic and chic.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this series! I loved stretching my creativity to create projects using photos in conjunction with my stamps. I certainly have found a new project to work toward next year… I didn’t have enough time this year to make ALL of our cards (I may have ordered some photo cards to supplement EEK), so my plan is to start making them in bulk much earlier in the year!!! I know, everybody says they’re going to start holiday cards earlier and still there’s always a rush haha.

Have a marvelous weekend, friends! Thanks for visiting with me all week! 🙂

Holiday Card Hustle, Day 6!

Hi there! Welcome back for Day 6 of The Holiday Card Hustle. My best tip for mass producing holiday cards is to use lots of die cuts and small amounts of stamping. If you can use die cuts that are standalone pieces, instead of die cuts that require stamping on them, your work will go that much more quickly! Today’s photo card project has lots of die cutting and only a wee bit of stamping on it.

I started by trimming down my 4×6 horizontal photograph to 3.25″x4.75″ and matted it on a piece of 4×6 grayish-brown glitter card stock. I mounted it on an A7 white card stock panel. I wanted to create a visual cascade down the front of my card, with my family being the center of the cascade. I used some solid standalone dies to create a festive Christmas tree branch for the top left corner. For the greenery, I used the lovely spruce sprigs in the Ellen Hutson Poinsettia and Pine die set with some avocado green card stock, then layered them in the corner of the card. I added a few little baubles using the Birch Press Design Classic Ornament dies, stamping one of the little designs from the coordinating stamp set on the wine colored ornament and heat embossing in silver.

For the greeting, I used one of Simon Says Stamp’s new stamp and die sets from this year’s holiday offerings, and I just love it: Fa La La. The die is large enough to cover most of an A2 card front, and definitely still large enough to make an impact on this A7 card front. I die cut it from some bright blue foil card stock, then stamped the sentiment from the coordinating stamp set on a very thin strip of card stock, adhering both of them towards the bottom right corner of the card front to complete my visual cascade.

Well, that’s all for me today! I will be back tomorrow with Day 7 of The Holiday Card Hustle, and quite possibly my favorite card from the series! I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for some last minute holiday inspiration! Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day. 🙂

 

Holiday Card Hustle, Day 5!

Good morning! Happy Wednesday! I feel like this week has taken so long…. maybe that’s because my to-do list is about a mile long haha! Today is Day 5 of my Holiday Card Hustle series. I used a photo from last year’s photo shoot, because my kids were so darn adorable in this picture that I couldn’t help it haha! The colors of our photo shoot from last year worked just perfectly with the Wonderland Make It Market kit from Papertrey Ink.

Those Make It Market kits are my kryptonite. Such perfect design and so many perfect little details. This year’s kit had flowers. You know me and flowers. I was helpless to resist. For this photo card, I started with an A7 sized panel of card stock. I then trimmed the photo of my kiddos down. I added a strip of the floral patterned paper that came with the kit on the other side so that the edges of the photo and patterned paper were equidistant from the edge of the gray panel.

There are a lot of patterns going on in this project. I wanted to put a somewhat “neutral” barrier over the line where the two pieces met on the card base. When mixing patterned papers, it’s good to neutralize your busier patterns by placing a looser, simpler pattern between, one that contrasts with the busy patterns. I have the rose patterned paper and the photo of my kids with lots going on visually, and so the strip of birch patterned paper acts as a kind of visual neutralizer over the line where the patterns join together. I adhered the strip of birch paper, then die cut some of the pre-printed pieces from the kit. For the greeting, the “wishing you a wonder-filled holiday” seemed almost made for this photo of my kiddos whispering secrets to each other. I die cut one of the scalloped ovals from the kit from some linen card stock, then added the greeting towards the bottom half of the die cut and added the little bouquet of flowers on top. Sort of looks like a basket of holiday flowers that you’d send to a loved one!!

Once I finally finished pushing all of the pieces around and deciding on a layout for this card, this one would be super simple to mass produce, especially if you used the pre-printed die cuts from the kit’s paper pad.

Well, that’s all for me today. I will be back tomorrow with Day 6 of the Holiday Card Hustle! I really need to kick in gear now… I’m somewhat in denial that Christmas is only 3 weeks away!!! Hope your holiday cardmaking is going well, friends! Have a marvelous day. 🙂

 

The Holiday Card Hustle, Day 4.

Good morning! I took a bit of a break from The Holiday Card Hustle yesterday for the post for A Blog Named Hero’s new challenge, but I’m back today with another fairly quick and easily mass-produced project. It has a similar layout to the project that I posted on Sunday, but uses a really pretty Avery Elle stamp set, as well as the custom signature stamp that I ordered from Bossy Joscie.

To start, I trimmed my horizontal 4×6 photo down to 4″x4.75″ and mounted it on a panel of A7 dove gray card stock. Next, I trimmed a 3″x4.75″ panel of darker gray card stock and used my lovely custom cling stamp from Bossy Joscie to create my greeting. I heat embossed it in white so that it would really pop on that dark gray card stock. It was a bit of an investment, but it’s something that I will be able to use on my holiday cards for years to come, provided I don’t misplace it in my super tidy and organized (ha!!!!) craft room.

When connecting two larger panels of card stock on a card front, I like to ensure that the transition between the two panels is seamless, so I like to use some sort of “barrier” strip over that line between the two panels. For my previous card, I used a strip of glitter card stock; for this card, I used a lovely older set from Avery Elle called Beautiful Bow (EH|SSS). I heat embossed it using silver sparkle embossing powder on some navy blue card stock, then fussy cut it out. (This part took a minute or two, but the lines are nice and simple, so very easy to do.) I layered it over the line to hide where the two panels meet.

I love how perfectly that custom stamp works with the photo. It’s simple, but the fonts are so lovely and… legible haha!! It’s 3″x4″, so I can use it on the inside of a regular A2 card, as well! Totally worth the money if my hand doesn’t cramp! 😉

Hope you enjoyed this project! I will be back tomorrow with more photo card inspiration for the Holiday Card Hustle! Have a marvelous day, friends!

Holiday Card Hustle, day 2.

Good morning! I’m back again for Day 2 of my Holiday Card Hustle series. Over the next several days, I’m going to show you how to incorporate your beautiful family photos into your holiday cards using your holiday stamping supplies. It’s like a handmade photo card hybrid. I feel like I have so many Christmas card supplies that it makes me feel almost guilty if I don’t put them to use for our family Christmas cards. The card I’m sharing today is one of the simpler cards of the series, really a great one for mass production, and this basic design will probably make up the bulk of the holiday cards that I send out this year.

Like my card yesterday, this card today is a 5×7 instead of a traditional A2 card. I chose to work with this larger canvas because it mats perfectly with a 4×6 photo, as well as giving me some extra space to add embellishment. You want the photo to be the focal point of your holiday card, naturally, so I wanted to make sure that my embellishment didn’t cover up or detract in any way from my kiddos’ cheesy, precious little smiles. 😉

I started by trimming a 5″x7″ panel of Fresh Snow linen card stock from Papertrey Ink. Most people just send out flat photo cards anymore, but this could easily be modified to create a more typical folded card by cutting a 10″x7″ and scoring at the 5″ mark. I trimmed 1/4″ from the edge of my photo so that I could mat it with a 4″x6″ panel of Scarlet Jewel card stock. I wanted to bring out some of the colors in the photo, and I’m glad that I fussed over our outfits so much, because the pretty navy and wine combination looks so nice on a Christmas card!!!

After I had mounted my matted photo to the A7 panel, I added some embellishment. I used the Simple Gift Bow dies with some dark blue shimmer card stock to add a holiday “bow” to the corners, then added a gold glitter die cut Merry Christmas at the bottom of the photo. The gold stands out nicely from, but still coordinates with, the shades of gold in the photo. (You could also use black and white or sepia photos if you wanted to use your own unique color scheme for your holiday cards!)

And that’s all! Because this one involves trimming and die cutting, it’d be a super quick one to mass produce. Just cut and glue together et voila!

I hope you’re enjoying this series. I’ve so enjoyed stretching my creativity to find ways to keep the photos as a focal point and still have an element of being “handmade” in my holiday cards. I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for Day 3 of The Holiday Card Hustle! Have a marvelous Saturday, friends!