Hello! Today I’m sharing my seventh card in my Personal Christmas Card Challenge, a challenge to see how many different ways I can use a seasonal looking background to create my Christmas cards.
The main panel of this card is made from a single piece of metallic kraft cardstock that I created using my DIY Metallic Cardstock technique. I die cut the lower two thirds using the Time For Tea Designs Nordic Star Slimline Die my personal challenge revolves around. The top third was then partially die cut with The Ton’s Pierced Nested Dies to give it more than just a plain edging.
As the space between the two partially die cut sections was always going to look a little ugly, I decided early on to cover it with a strip of decoratively edged white cardstock. I chose an edge die from the Eyelet Borders Die Set from Pretty Pink Posh and die cut a white strip, making sure the die was lined up with the first side I’d cut before cutting the second edge. I glued the strip directly onto the metallic kraft card panel, folding the edges over to the rear of the piece before moving onto the rest of my planned embellishments.
It was at this point that I decided to add a piece of gold mirror card behind the die cut stars in the lower section of the design. This meant that the bottom two thirds of the card was now at a different height to the top third so I cut two pieces of scrap white cardstock and added them to the back as packing to keep the entire panel even. I glued this completed piece directly onto an 8 5″×3.5″ slimline card base.
I also wanted to give the top third of my card a little interest so I decided to cut a template using the Time For Tea Designs Nordic Star Slimline Die and placed it over the upper third of the kraft panel. I pencilled in dots where the centre of each star was and removed the die cut guide. I added small dots of Ranger Multi Medium Matte Adhesive to each pencil mark and added a tiny red flat back pearl to each spot. I continued adding the pearls across the entire card front, adding them to the centre of each “star” as well so the look remained consistent. These pearls are only 1.5mm wide and originally sold as nail art embellishments but I love these for using on cards. They are small enough to not be overwhelming and they’re the perfect size to still fit into the post without the need for extra postage fees.
I have a lot of peel off stickers in my stash and some sheets had never been used. Often, I find that stickers don’t do any justice to our work and a lot of the time that’s because we struggle to layer them in any pleasing dimensional way. We can use a quick wipe of cornflour/cornstarch to remove the stickiness from the backs but most of the time they’ve been printed on pretty thin and flimsy sticker paper that is way too delicate to mount on foam or silicone double sided tapes. Some recommend sticking them onto cardstock but, if the sticker is intricate, cutting around the sticker edge can be difficult and leave a bit of a mess, ruining both the sticker and the cardstock backing.
I have a better option, especially when using semi transparent or foiled stickers, like peel off stickers often are. I adhere my stickers to a scrap piece of acetate, often a leftover piece from craft supply packaging. The transparent backing is so much easier to work with in general. I find cutting along the outer edge of the stickers doesn’t need to be quite as perfect as it would need to be if I was to use cardstock and, if the sticker is foiled or transparent, the sticker retains its original look much more than if it were mounted on regular cardstock.
For this card, I added some varying sized poinsettia stickers to acetate and cut around them as close as I could to the edge but not cutting into the sticker itself. There was a tiny amount of acetate showing when I finished but that edge was so fine, it wasn’t visible once I added the poinsettias to the card. I decided not to take chances with regular foam tape, opting to use clear 2mm silicone tape instead. The acetate and silicone tape working together gave the appearance that the poinsettias were floating above the card and using these flexible products behind the high gloss stickers allowed them to be bent without any damage. They’re now also perfectly safe to go into the Christmas post!
After arranging the Poinsettia stickers, I added some matching leaves beneath the flowers, directly onto the white cardstock. This easily gave the dimensional appearance we usually expect with our die cuts, I just had to make sure the leaves weren’t inhibited from sticking by any of the silicone tape behind the flowers.
To finish off, I kept with the high gloss peel off sticker theme and added a simple gold sentiment to the centre of the white strip. I love the look the peel off’s give to a card design, they always look so polished, as long as they’re stuck down straight and without ripples. Not the easiest stickers to use in that regard! 😉
To see the earlier card made for my Personal Christmas Card Challenge, made with this background die, please click on the image below. Thanks so much for spending time with me today, I look forward to next time! 😊
Constantly Carding 