vintage

Songs of the Season: Christmas Is a Feeling In Your Heart!

December 25, 2023

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

Hello friends, and Merry Christmas to you! I am back for this month’s Songs of the Season post, made extra special due to the fact that today is the big day… Christmas Day! I adore holiday crafting in all forms… cardmaking, crafting, baking, etc etc… and I always listen to Christmas music while I am channeling my love for Christmas into something tangible. My mom and I used to listen to the “Sounds of Christmas” album from Johnny Mathis while we baked cookies when I was a child, and so my heart always feels lighter whenever I hear the jubilant introduction to this album. This month, as I have been crafting and baking, taking my kiddos to look at Christmas lights, and traveling to watch the Nutcracker, I have been reflecting on how much I enjoy Christmas and the feelings of happiness the season bring.

One of the lines in the song “Christmas is a Feeling In Your Heart” particularly resonated with me:

Faith and hope, goodwill to man
Love and peace, and faith again
Let the prayers that Christmas bring
Brush your heart like angel wings

In this time of such turmoil around the globe, I want to encourage you to carry those feelings and prayers of love, peace, and goodwill towards our fellow humans that we feel so much more deeply at Christmas into our daily life. We are all citizens of our world, and I hope desperately that the coming year brings peace and calm.

I have been having a love affair with the gorgeous tree in the Winter Woodlands set from Tim Holtz. It is just the perfect Christmas tree! I was shopping at Target with my kiddos last weekend, meandering in the Christmas section, when I saw some beautiful monochromatic holiday cards, featuring a tree that looked so similar to the perfect tree in this stamp set that I wanted to create my own version in a rainbow of colors! The vintage pastel pink of the cards in the store reminded me that pastel colors can certainly be used as holiday colors if applied in the right way. Let’s get started on the details for my card!

For this quartet of cards, I first pulled out four different shades of cardstock, in light bubblegum pink, lilac, sky blue, and mint green. To coordinate with the different cardstock colors, I pulled out Carnation, Lilac, Marine, and Tropic Pawsitively Saturated Inks. I wanted to create a “glow” behind the Christmas trees, before stamping my trees, I used blending brushes to lightly blend a bit of coordinating color in the center of each colorful A2 card front. I used my handmade sparkling watercolors to splatter some shimmering coordinating “snow,” adding to the magical feel of the cards!

After I had created my quartet of colorful backgrounds and left them to dry, I used my MISTI to stamp the large tree stamp from the Winter Woodlands stamp set from Tim Holtz. I stamped each tree on another panel of the same pastel shades of cardstock using the coordinating ink color, then stamped them again using embossing ink directly over the initial stamped image and sprinkled holographic glitter embossing powder over the top. The effect is so colorful and sparkly!

I die cut all of the sparkly trees using the DieCember Winter Woodlands Coordinating Die (which is now back in stock!) and adhered them on each coordinating blended card front using foam adhesive squares. I also added a smattering of shimmering gems on each tree in coordinating shades to create super sparkly, monochromatic holiday trees!

For the greeting, I stamped a sentiment from Holiday Typewriter using the same shades of ink on their coordinating cardstock colors and die cut them with the coordinating die. I popped up the greetings on each card with a double layer of adhesive to help them pop even more from their background. The pastel shades look so beautiful for Christmas with all of the different elements of sparkle and shimmer! The simple design on these four cards came together really quickly, and having the different color schemes would be a great way to “mass produce” without being boring.

Well, that’s all for my projects today. I hope that, if you celebrate, you are having a wonderful holiday with lots of family, yummy food, and maybe some gifts, and remember: Christmas is a feeling in your heart. 🙂 If this season is a difficult one for you for any reason, I am sending you lots of love and hugs. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous holiday!

Creating a Vintage Color Palette with Neutrals!

July 20, 2022

Hi there! Today, I’m up on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel with a video using my oldie-but-still-a-goodie Miss Your Smile stamp set, which was one of the very first sets that I illustrated for Pinkfresh Studio! Miss Your Smile may be a bit older, but coloring it gets even more fun with each use, and today I share some tips on how to get more from your watercolors by mixing neutrals with your super bright colors to create a more vintage-y color palette. You can watch the video below or click HERE to watch on YouTube.

In case you can’t watch the video, I’ll do a quick rundown of how I made this project with some still photos. Let’s get started with the details!

I began by heat embossing the large floral image from Miss Your Smile using some metallic peach embossing powder onto a full size slimline card base created from Arches Cold Press watercolor paper. The metallic peach embossing powder is a lovely, soft alternative to the traditional gold or black stamping! Next, I used my Holbein watercolors to do some watercoloring on this huge image. I wanted to create a more muted, vintage color scheme, so I chose some of the brightest shades of fuchsia and hot pink in my watercolor palette and mixed them with a deep, plummy chocolate brown. Mixing the bright colors with the very dark neutral brown helped to tone down the colors without making them lose their vibrancy.

Once I had finished watercoloring, I felt like the top corner was a bit too open and starkly white to match the soft, muted color palette of the flowers, so I very lightly blended some Soft Lilac ink in the corner opposite the flowers, muting the cool lilac by lightly blending some Warm Buff ink over the top of it. Pairing the two unlikely ink shades is such a fun way to create a wider color palette using the inks and watercolors that you already have!

Once I had finished my card base, I die cut a beautiful Ornate Circle die cut from some coordinating metallic peach foil cardstock. I created a greeting by simultaneously die cutting both pieces of the Lots of Love die set from some coordinating deep plum cardstock. I made sure to keep the interiors of the letters safe (such as on the “o” and “e”), then adhered them in the center of the die cut. I love how the negative space in the greeting still allows you to see the watercoloring without feeling clunky or overbearing on the watercolored panel! The final touch was to add a few Sparkling Champagne pearls to finish it off.

Well, that’s all for my project today! I hope that you enjoyed that project. I encourage you to try mixing in some neutrals to your bright watercolors or ink blending… it’s such fun to see how the colors can be manipulated to create totally new color palettes from the colors that you already have! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

United We Flourish- Ellen Hutson featuring Concord and 9th!

December 17, 2017

Good morning! Today, the Where Creativity Meets C9 design team has the distinct pleasure of helping to introduce the newest installment of the Ellen Hutson United We Flourish collaboration sets: Sweet Sprinkles from Ellen Hutson and Concord and 9th!

Aren’t these images just so precious!? And I love that they can be made into a cupcake or an ice cream cone. Nobody does versatility better than Concord and 9th!

For my project, I was channeling those vintage ice cream shoppe posters that you’d see in the 50’s… the ones with the pretty pastel dollops of ice cream and distressed, vintage background. I used Distress Oxide Inks for all of my stamping today. The lovely, creamy colors lent themselves perfectly to ice cream, don’t you think?

I began by die cutting the cone and three scoops of ice cream from some cream colored card stock. Next, I stamped the cone using Wild Honey Distress Oxide ink and the ice cream scoops using Cracked Pistachio, Antique Linen, and Worn Lipstick (mint, vanilla, and strawberry!) inks. I added the sprinkles stamp to the strawberry scoop using some white pigment ink.

I trimmed down a panel of cream colored card stock to be slightly smaller than A2. I arranged my triple decker ice cream cone on the card front and adhered it with dimensional foam adhesive, then used the little heart stamps included in the Sweet Sprinkles set and more Antique Linen Oxide ink (some stamped off once to make a very subtle, almost bokeh look) to add some “confetti” in the background. I stamped the greeting using Walnut Stain Oxide ink, then added some clear embossing powder over the top to add a bit of shine to this fairly texturally flat card. I mounted the cream panel on a minty A2 card base.

Well, that’s all for my card! Aren’t those stamps just darling??! Now, a celebration deserves a giveaway!! Here are the details:

To celebrate, two randomly selected commenters will win a $30 gift certificate to the Ellen Hutson shop and two commenters will win a $30 gift certificate to the Concord & 9th shop. To enter just leave a comment on the Ellen Hutson Classroom blog and the Concord blog by 12pm PST on December 26th.

Emily Midgett—-> you are here