Christmas Cards with Non-Holiday Supplies
Hello!
I'm back after a month's hiatus! Still working out the scheduling of my blog, and also the holidays and my boyfriend's upcoming finals are taking over a bit!
I wanted to focus today on making holiday/Christmas cards with supplies not designed specifically for the holidays. Christmas stamps and dies are super fun, but sometimes you just don't have the time or money to get new specific supplies, that you can only use a couple months a year. So I wanted to share with you what I look for in my existing supplies for holiday cards, and how I turned them into holiday cards!
Please note that for this post, I have used mainly Altenew stamps, stencils and dies, but you can use any similar supplies. This post was *not* supplied by or requested by Altenew.
These are the basic elements I look for in the supplies I have:
1. potential Christmas patterns: polka dots for snow, stripes & plaid, trees that could create a winter scene, etc.
2. potential Christmas shapes: florals that could be holiday themed, vaguely poinsettia shaped flowers or winter flowers, leaves in general as long as they aren't tropical looking
3. specialty paper: gold and silver, red and green, or even blue for winter scenes
4. any Christmas or winter themed ink colors to color any of our patterns or shapes
5. any embellishments that could be used for snow, berries or holiday decoration (red or green gems, pearls, white embossing powder for snow, etc.).
6. alphabet stamps or dies are super useful for this, because you can spell out anything you want, without having to get Christmas sentiments
For my first card, I combined a leaf cover die, specialty paper, red embellishments and alphabet dies to create my Christmas card.
I did some green watercolor on some watercolor cardstock, and then die cut the leaf cover die from it. I also used it to cut white card stock to layer underneath our green paper to create dimension. I then adhered them both on top of silver glitter card stock for some extra holiday shine. I then flicked water on the watercolor paper to create some spots that could emulate snow.
Then I die cut the letters for "peace" twice, once from gray and once from white. I glued the gray behind the white for a bit of a shadow effect, and then painted the white letters with Wink of Stella for some shimmer. Then below "peace", I added 5 red gems for some extra traditional Christmas colors.
For my second card, I found stencils that were generic enough to look like Christmas flowers and used Christmas colored inks to make it obvious they were holiday flowers. This a set of two stencils, with one that adds depth and details to the outline image. I used reds for the flower, and greens for the leaves for traditional Christmas colors. I then added white shimmer watercolor in drops to look like snow. For some extra shine and dimension, I added some pearl Nuvo Drops and some sequins. I then used an alphabet stamp set to say "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" on another. Sometimes just the right colors and some snow effects are all you need to turn a non-holiday flower into a Christmas card!
For my last card, this was an experiment for using Nuvo Drops as holly berries. This means they needed to be much bigger than I normally use Nuvo Drops and bundled near each other. For this try, I applied all the different colors of berries at once. However, this meant that some blended together a bit and lost their nice round shape. When I make this card again, I will wait for each set of berries to dry before adding the berries that will be touching the others. But I wanted to show you this card anyway, even though it isn't perfect!
I used this plaid background die for a white on white texture look, and then painted this garland die different greens, and layered it together to create a half-wreath or the leaves to a holly berry. Then I applied the Nuvo Drops as I mentioned before in dark pink and gold. I then die cut letters out of Kraft cardstock to spell "joy". When I re-make this card, I might move the joy closer to the focal point, but I'm not sure yet. But I think this card design has potential!
That's it for now! I hope this was inspiring to see what you can do with your regular supplies to turn festive! And of course, you can make tropical Christmas cards by adding white embossing powder to palm trees or have it snowing over the ocean, or whatever your heart desires. I highly recommend alphabet stamps or dies so you can turn any card into any sentiment you want though.
Hope you're all doing well, and sending you love, peace and joy!
xoxo
Meghan