double embossed ditches

If my funny road looks a little outa' perspective, rather than studying it too closely, check out my ditches! I LOVE my ditches! Our gorgeous hoar-frosty January weeds have inspired me over and over this year. SOOOO beautiful! What I did was Versamark my various weed images onto my paper, leaving room for that road. I poured gold embossing powder carefully carefully onto only the bottoms of the foliage. Tapped it off and then sprinkled on the white embossing powder. Tapped that off and heat embossed the whole thang. THEN I sponged on the wintry sunrise colors, keeping it foggy and misty like we've seen for days now. Doesn't it look pristine and northern?

joy joy joy one last time

There! One last card and we'll let Christmas 2015 be by-gone! Gone by. Good-bye! Whatever! It's a simply card using only dies and no stamping whatsoever. You could use this same technique (if that's what it's called) and white/silver color scheme for a wedding or baby card as well.

wishing you Christmas joy

Remember I said I was going to show you some more cards with the Sleigh Ride set. Well. Here is another card. I popped a layer of vellum on top of the "town" and the trees and sleigh are on top of the vellum. If you sponge a bit of blue ink onto the bottom of the two back cut-outs the front designs pop out better.

{effortless} negative space snowman

Several friends who have young (ish) daughters have requested instructions for more basic cards. So I'm launching my {effortless} series. I don't have a schedule for when I'll post these since inspirations come to me at random times! But I'm interested in getting you off to a good start with some lovely do-able ideas. 

This snowman card is one of the quickest, yet brilliant card schemes I found on Pinterest. (Don't ask me where; I searched and couldn't find it again. WHY didn't I pin it???) I don't think it looked exactly like this since I couldn't find it, but it's my version anyway!

Cut a piece of cardstock in half the long way so it measures 11 1/2" by 4 14". Score and fold it down the middle. This is the base of your card. Cut a piece of blue cardstock 4 1/4" by 5 1/2" and adhere it inside the card on the half where your greeting goes.  

Now the fun begins! You may either stamp snowflakes on the front of your card or dry emboss a wintery image. In this case, I used Stampin' Up's Northern Flurries embossing folder. 

Now get out your circle punch of whatever size you have. The size of your snowman depends on the size of your punch. Any size is cute! I used my 1 3/8" punch.  

Punch out three part-circles on the front card flap, starting by punching about a 1/2 circle and punching smaller as you go up. Use a square punch to make his hat. I didn't have a punch for the hat brim so I just used a scissors to cut a skinny li'l brim. 

Three pearls placed inside on the blue cardstock made up his buttons. DONE!!