Christmas in January...

Well, I made a (sort of) resolution at the beginning of the year that I was going to try to make 4 or 5 Christmas cards each month. I'm also hoping to post them on the 25th of the month. So....since today is January 25th, it's time to post my first 2014 holiday cards.

You may remember that when I needed an extra Christmas card in December - after receiving a new address from a friend - I quickly made two cards like this:

 Since I made two of these, and only used one, I've saved this one towards my January Christmas Card Commitment. And I decided to make a few more cards like it, but also try a couple of different things with them.

First, I tried cutting the snowflakes out of glittery blue cardstock. It's very hard to get a good photo of anything glittery, but at least the photo below gives you an idea of how this changes the look of the card:

I used the same glittery silver embossing powder for the sentiment that I had used on the previous card. It doesn't look very silver in this photo, but trust me, it is. And it's beautiful! I'm not sure why the blue snowflake in the upper right hand corner looks so terribly out of focus, but I was just too lazy to take another photo.

I still added the gems to the centers of each snowflake, and for the largest one, I applied a tiny little snowflake to the center under the gem for a little added dimension.

I thought the blue glitter cardstock looked okay, but I wasn't wild about it.

 Next, I decided to try something really fun - I cut my snowflakes out of white cardstock, pressed them face down into the Versamark ink pad and then covered them with the glittery, silver embossing powder that I had used for the sentiment. I held them in place on a heat-proof surface (my Silpat) with my piercing tool and then used my embossing gun to melt the powder that was clinging to the surface.

I thought they turned out great! I used Gem-Tac by Beacon to adhere them, because some of the embossing powder does get onto the back of the snowflakes, too, and melts there. I was afraid that regular craft glue might not hold them, but I'm certain the Gem-Tac will. I use it to hold all my gems and embellishments and it works great.

Here's a close up of one of the snowflakes. Can you see how the embossing powder has melted around the edges? It actually looks like a sparkly metal embellishment.













I liked how these turned out so much, that I made three of them. While I didn't take a photo of it, I also heat embossed the inside sentiment (and a couple of small stamped snowflakes) with the silver embossing power.

So now I have 5 cards ready for Christmas 2014. My Christmas Card Commitment has been met...so far.

You know, I have some red embossing powder that has some gold glitter in it. I wonder how that would look on these snowflakes?

Thanks so much for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.
Cheryl