Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

snowflakes

Pink and Purple Snowflakes with New Simon Says Stamp!

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

Hi friends! It is, somehow, the beginning of November, so I am going to be leaning in to the holiday posts as much as I possibly can while it’s “acceptable,” which I deem to be until Epiphany next year! I adore Christmas, I adore crafting, and I am absolutely tickled pink that it’s officially time to lean in to all things Christmas, sparkly, and cheerful. I think we all need some extra joy this year, and who doesn’t need a little more sparkle in their lives? I think that snowflakes are among the most beautiful and somewhat neutral imagery in the holiday arsenal; you can use them for simple winter cards or you can pair them with other imagery to make them specifically Christmas-themed. I have paired the gorgeous new Heartfelt Snowflakes stamps and dies from the Simon Says Stamp Sweet Wishes release with a vibrant fuchsia and plum color palette to create this trio of sparkling “winter” cards and tag, perfect for those who might not celebrate Christmas but still enjoy winter festivities. Let’s get started with the details!

*I have linked all of the products used at the bottom of the post using affiliate links for your convenience. Thank you for shopping with my links! I truly appreciate your support for my work!*

For my projects today, I wanted to select a unique color palette that didn’t necessarily fit the typical “Christmas” color palette, since we were working with the beautifully unique snowflakes of the Heartfelt Snowflakes stamp set. I selected Dragonfruit and Fig from Concord and 9th’s gorgeous color palette. I began by arranging several of the snowflake images on an A2 panel of Fig cardstock, stamping the images first with Simon Says Stamp white pigment ink and embossing them with Hero Arts Iridescent Purple embossing powder. Pairing the white pigment ink and iridescent embossing powder creates a most beautiful, shimmery combination on the vibrant purple cardstock! I repeated the process with a second panel of Fig cardstock, creating two full panels of embossed snowflake patterned paper.

After I had created two panels of snowflake paper, I used the coordinating dies from the Heartfelt Snowflakes product suite to die cut the images, dividing them to create multiple projects. I trimmed down the remaining intact snowflake panel, then used a blending brush to blend Dragonfruit and Fig inks around the edges of the panel, creating a vibrant glow on the embossed panel. I also splattered the background with some sparkling handmade watercolors to add further texture and shimmer.

For the greeting, I die cut the detail layer of the Fancy Tidings of Cheer from pink glitter cardstock and the shadow layer from vellum, adhering the two together using liquid adhesive. I adhered the blended snowflake panel in the center of an A2 Dragonfruit panel of cardstock, leaving a bright pink mat around the edges, then used foam adhesive to add the sentiment die cut and some individual snowflake die cuts. I added Taffy gems to the center of the snowflake die cuts, finishing the card off with a sparkling pink twine bow!

For my second card, I used some of the leftover Heartfelt Snowflakes embossed die cuts to adorn a vibrant shaker card. I used blending brushes to blend Fig and Dragonfruit ink down the diagonal on an A2 panel of Dragonfruit cardstock, splattering the entire panel with some more sparkling watercolors. I used some leftover packaging to create a “flat” shaker pocket, filling the shaker with a variety of color-coordinated sequins and gems.

For the greeting, I die cut the detail layer of the Peace On Earth Script die set using some brushed lavender foil cardstock, backing it with a vellum shadow layer. I arranged some of the leftover embossed snowflake die cuts around the sentiment die cut, adhering them with liquid adhesive, then hiding the dimensional foam squares behind the solid die cuts. I added some Taffy gems to the center of the individual snowflake die cuts, creating a vibrant shaker card that is so festive and fun!

I had one large Heartfelt Snowflakes embossed die cut left, so I decided to use it as a focal point on a smaller tag. I die cut the scalloped tag die from the Tag Adornments die set using some super sparkly pink glitter cardstock, then mounted the snowflake die cut in the center of the tag using foam adhesive. I added some extra sparkle to the details of the snowflake die cut with some Taffy and Clear Pawsitively Dazzling Gems, finally adding a coordinating pink ribbon loop from which I could hang my tag on a package!

Well, that’s all for my projects today! Can you believe that I was able to create all of these projects from just two panels of embossed snowflakes? I love a good two-fer! Or in this case, a three-fer, ha! 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!

Pinkfresh Studio August 2023 Holiday Stamp, Die, Stencil, and Hot Foil Release

Hi there! Today, Pinkfresh Studio is releasing their holiday collection, and boy is it a stunner! The August 2023 Release features so many beautiful sentiments, timeless holiday images, and elegant hot foil plates to create the most marvelous array of holiday cards! I have two wintry cards both featuring the new Large Snowflakes dies to share with you today, so let’s get started with the details!

I have quite the collection of snowflake dies in my stash of holiday cardmaking supplies. I can’t help it. Their elegance and intricate beauty entrance me. The new Large Snowflakes dies feature three different shapes in a small, medium, and large size, perfect for creating a variety of styles and projects. Both of my cards today also feature an icy color combination of Ocean Breeze, Aquamarine, and Slumber inks. I think these three colors create the loveliest frosty background for my shimmering snowflakes!

To start my first project, I blended Ocean Breeze, Aquamarine, and Slumber inks on a panel of white, A2 cardstock, blending super lightly at first, then gradually building up the layers to create a smooth transition between the colors. Once I had a blend that I liked, I ran the entire blended panel through my die cutting machine using the utterly gorgeous new Snowflakes Cover Plate die. The cutout and stitched details on this new cover plate are spectacular and so very unique!! Once I had die cut the blended panel, I spritzed some iridescent shimmer spray over the entire piece to add even more shimmer and sparkle.

I have a mild obsession with foiled/mirror cardstock. I have so many different styles and shades, because I am truly that picky when it comes to my color combinations. The colors have to be just right. Imagine my delight when I searched through my stash to find this beautiful shade of blue with a minty green iridescent coating (check it out HERE) that perfectly matched my icy, shimmery, ink blended background. I die cut as many snowflakes as I could from a 1/2 sheet of the cardstock, knowing that I would have plenty for another card. I also die cut an iridescent white mirror foil (say that three times fast!) frame using the Pinkfresh Studio Art Deco Frame die. I backed the blended, die cut background with a panel of coordinating blue cardstock, then popped up that shining frame around the outside edge with some foam adhesive.

After I had added my frame, it was time to arrange my snowflakes and add a sentiment! I heat embossed a greeting from the new Holiday Large Sentiments stamp set, which I heat embossed using some beautiful shimmery teal embossing powder on some heavyweight vellum cardstock. I die cut the finished sentiment using the coordinating die and placed it next to my frame, popping it up with some clear foam adhesive. I then tucked some of the medium and small foil Large Snowflakes dies around the sentiment and under the frame, finally adding some Aqua Glitter Drops for even more sparkle! I don’t think a holiday card, especially one with snowflakes, can ever have too much sparkle!

My second project is much simpler and utilizes the largest of the three Large Snowflakes dies. This largest die is so generously sized that it easily stands alone as a focal point for a card front! I began this card by masking off the edges of a white, A2 card front using painter’s tape. I then used blending brushes to blend Ocean Breeze, Aquamarine, and Slumber inks on the exposed area, creating a lovely monochromatic ombré down my card front. Once I’d finished blending and before removing the mask around the edges, I spritzed some more shimmer spray over the top of the ink blending to create a beautiful backdrop for my snowflake die cut. I removed the masking tape and was left with a crisp white frame around the edge of my shimmery, icy, blended background!

I felt like the background needed a bit of extra texture before adding my snowflake die cut, so I ran the blended panel through my die cut machine using the Sparkling Diamonds Cover Plate die. The “sparkles” at the apex of each diamond remind me of snowflakes, and I thought it worked perfectly with my icy card! To add a little extra height to my extra large Large Snowflakes die cut, I cut out two more from white cardstock and layered them together using liquid adhesive. This allowed me to add extra height without having to fuss with tiny pieces of foam adhesive! I adhered the snowflake to the center of the card front using liquid adhesive.

For the greeting, I used the new Basic Banners Christmas stamp set with the previously-released coordinating Basic Banners die. I heat embossed it in teal (if you don’t have teal embossing powder, you can always stamp the sentiment in your coordinating dye ink, then stamp again with embossing ink and cover with clear or pearlescent embssing powder! This won’t work on vellum, but it works beautifully on regular cardstock!), then die cut the sentiments with the handy-dandy one pass Basic Banners die. I now have a ton of leftover die cuts to use on futur projects! Hooray! I added it smack dab in the center of my snowflake with some foam adhesive, then added some more Aqua Glitter Drops at the tips of the snowflake for more sparkle.

Well, that’s all for my projects today! Now for some fun givewaway information:

We will be giving away the full release on the Pinkfresh blog & YouTube channel. 

Pinkfresh Studio will be giving away a total of TEN $25  gift cards along the hop. As per usual with blog hops – the winners will be selected from the comments.
Winners will be announced on August 30, 2023 on our GIVEAWAY PAGE. Please mention that they must check that page & claim their prize within 2 weeks.

Here’s the full hop list below:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!

Video: Adding Tons of Sparkle to your Holiday Cards!

Hi there! Today, I am over on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel with this holiday card that has so much sparkle, you might need some sunglasses to look at it! Sparkle is one of my favorite ways to differentiate my holiday cards from the cards that I make the rest of the year. If you can’t add sparkle on Christmas cards, when can you add sparkle? It just makes them so terribly festive!! Here’s the video:

Or you can click HERE to watch it on YouTube in HD.

This entire card began when I was experimenting with the new-ish Snowflakes Hot Foil Plate. I love the look of hot foiling on vellum, but I get mixed results, and I read somewhere that you could heat emboss on Hero Arts’s acetate. I thought to myself “if you can heat emboss on it, can you hot foil on it?” I feared that it would melt and ruin my plate, but it was a risk I was willing to take… and just look at the result!! I am so in love with this new-to-me technique, and I can’t wait to apply it to other projects. I hot foiled the Snowflakes Hot Foil Plate on some acetate using Speckled Prism hot foil from Spellbinders, which creates a beautiful, iridescent effect, which is particularly striking on the clear acetate!

Once I had my snowflake acetate panel, I knew that I wanted to create a snowy scene with snowflakes in various sizes, so I heat embossed the Snowflakes Background stamp on some watercolor paper using White Satin Pearl embossing powder. I taped the panel down to my watercolor board, spritzed the entire panel with some clean water using a fingertip sprayer, then used Sennelier watercolors to add some diagonal color. I started with a few stripes of blue, blended that into some minty turquoise, then created a custom purple by mixing the same blue with some bright magenta. The already-damp watercolor paper helped the colors to meld together beautifully and seamlessly. I hit the very wet panel with my heat gun and added some Winsor & Newton Iridescent Medium along the blue areas to create a sparkly, wintry, almost Aurora Borealis effect on my background. Once that had dried, I added some Payne’s Grey around the edges, pulling the color out to a nice fade using a clean damp brush, which created a halo effect around my sparkly AB background.

While my panel was drying, I created a frame using some pure white glitter cardstock and the Stitched Rectangles Essentials Dies. I used some super strong tape to adhere my clear snowflake panel to the sparkling frame. Once my watercolor panel had dried, I used some thin foam squares to adhere the framed acetate panel to my watercolored piece. I love how the foiled snowflakes look as though they’re floating on the watercolored background!

For the greeting, I heat embossed two different sentiments from the Ornaments Stamp set onto some Spellbinders Waterfall cardstock using white embossing powder. I used the Ornaments Dies to die cut the cursive greeting, which I think makes it look so incredibly clean and polished. I die cut the solid halo piece from the Jeff Alpha dies from some more Waterfall cardstock, then die cut the detail layer using the same white glitter cardstock, adhering them together with liquid adhesive. I added them to the clear snowflake panel with small dots of liquid adhesive to keep everything nice and clean, orienting them in the bottom right corner to allow the hot foiled snowflakes and watercoloring to take center stage!

Well, that’s all for this project and video! I can’t wait to try this hot foil-on-acetate technique out on more projects, and I hope you’ll try it out too. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

More Simon Says Stamp Cozy Hugs!

Hi there! I have a bit more inspiration using some of the new goodies from the Simon Says Stamp Cozy Hugs release, featuring one of my most favorite holiday themes: snowflakes! The beautiful new Glistening Snowflakes stamps are full of a variety of snowflakes, in tons of different sizes and arrangements, so you can create super simple and elegant cards with some heat embossing and colored cardstock, or you can go all in with sparkly embossing, ink blending, and die cuts! I, of course, had to go all in and create a festive wintry holiday card, perfect for a Christmas card or even a winter birthday! Let’s get started with the details.

I began by heat embossing many of the individual snowflakes and the snowflake “ornaments” from Glistening Snowflakes onto some heavyweight vellum using sparkly silver embossing powder. I die cut the embossed images using the coordinating dies (which are on reserve at the moment, but you can purchase with your regular order and they will be shipped as soon as they arrive at the warehouse!). I love the heat embossed snowflakes on the vellum; it creates such an ethereal look for the snowflakes, like they’re gently floating down your card front!

For the background, I started by blending Heather, Seafoam, and Morning inks on an A2 panel, then ran the blended panel through my die cut machine with the Filigree Snowflakes Embossing Folder. To help add a little bit of emphasis on the beautifully detailed snowflakes, I swiped the Hero Arts Dove White ink pad lightly over the top of the raised areas. I splattered some sparkly silver handmade watercolors on the blended panel, as well, to make it even frostier and more sparkly!

Because vellum can be tricky to neatly adhere to your card front, I decided to help “hide” some of the adhesive by adding a die cut frame, cut from some pearlescent lilac cardstock using the Nested Domed Arches dies. I popped it up on the card front using some Simon Says Stamp Foam Tape, then tucked the dangling snowflakes behind it. I also die cut a “snowy greetings” sentiment, cutting the outline layer from some pale ice blue cardstock and the detailed word layer from some Spellbinders Silver Glitter Foam. (I am slightly obsessed with these glitter foam sheets. They make adding dimension so incredibly quick and easy and come in a ton of different colors!) I popped the rest of the snowflakes using some clear foam tape, then added a smattering of Rock Candy Confetti from Trinity Stamps.

Well that’s all for my project today! The combination of different textures, snowflake sizes, sparkly silver splatters, and confetti helps make this card super festive and sparkly! I hope you enjoyed this wintry project. Christmas is coming, no mistake about that! Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!