A Cute Christmas Project

It's a long weekend here in Australia, the 2nd in 2 weeks. Yes we love our holidays! Not that it makes any difference to me as my life is one long holiday now that I've retired! So what better thing to do than stamp!

I saw this project on a challenge from the Christmas Stamping All Year Long blog, via Feline Playful the most wonderful site for collecting loads of different challenges. It saves you so much time as lots of challenges are listed daily.

I followed the tutorial on Splitcoast Stampers and came up with this solution. I've used lots of my new products from Stampin' Up!® that only arrived on Friday, so it was great fun.

After making the double pocket bag, I decided to create a traditional Christmas theme (I have plans for a modern one too) and thought I'd give the new Classic ink - Cherry Cobler, a bit of a work out. It does coordinate very well with this DSP form the "Jolly Holiday" Designer Series Paper pack available in our new Catalogue.

I've also been doing quite a bit of inked dry embossing with various folders and my Big Shot. This folder is one I bought in the USA last year, and reminds me of snow. At first I inked the folder up by swiping the ink pad directly onto the folder, but the image was a little too dark for what I envisaged, so I just ran another sheet of paper through to get a lighter tone. Perfect!

As I am also entering this in the Midnight Madness Challenge # 74, I followed the sketch for that challenge, but just adhered it to the side of the bag.

The detail photo shows you some of the techniques I've used while stamping the main image. I used my brayer to create the sky inside the circle, then stamped the lovely scene from "A Wish For Peace" by Stampin' Up! in Cherry Cobler. The circle was cut using the Circles # 2 die for the Big Shot, and the border circle was made with my Circle Scisssors Plus. I used a Blender  Pen to drag a little of the colour around in the image, and then tore some card stock to create a mask for sponging the foreground. I used the same technique of the blender pen on the skating couple (Winter Post stamp set) before cutting them out and raising them on Dimensionals. The angel charm is from my stash, as is the Twill Tape.

Part of the CAYL challenge was to make a card to match the bag. Being one to not like too much waste. I decided to utilize the first ink embossed piece of card (you remember the one that was too dark for the bag). So here is the card.

This time I've placed the Cherry Cobler onto a Vanilla Confetti card base. I've also used the new Scallop Trim Border Punch, and the image is from the Winter Post stamp set by SU.  I have just inked the stamp once and stamped off to achieve the 3 shades of Cherry.

And this is what they look like together - I've placed one card in each side of the bag.

This project is for the following challenges:

MMSC#74

 Christmas Card Challenge # 44
Let's Ink It Up
Stamptacular Sunday Challenge: Layer it on.
Paper Sundaes Challenge # 38: something from your stash
The Paper Players #18 Monochromatic
Stamp, Scrap and Doodle Saturdays:  Open

Wow - this is a first for me - trying to link to more than one challenge so let's hope I find everything OK.  Glad you've stopped by to have a look and I hope my cards and bag have given you some inspiration. I think this makes a really cute as well as practical gift for any age group. 

Until next time,

Happy Stamping,