Pick Your Potion with Festive Phrases for the Paper Craft Crew Challenge

Once again, I’m in the 2017 Holiday Catalog and once again, it’s amazing. I was surprised at the number of bundles in this catalog and hope to see much of it carry over to the 2018-2019 Annual Catalog. I have noticed throughout new Stampin’ Up! Holiday product videos that the one constant all presenters state is how ‘this bundle can be used beyond the holidays.’ Festive Phrases, the stamp set that I used, has 4 large images that can take you to Valentine’s Day, yet that one sentiment can be used all year. I can already tell you that is a stamp set that will not be carried over. The Painted Harvest Bundle would be the perfect carryover. I really wish that our designer series paper would last longer than a year as there have been several packages I’ve seen over the years that are timeless. You do need a refresh every now and then. I believe it was the 2015 Holiday Catalog where the DSP was the beautiful watercolor type images and I love it when you can use your Thinlits to cut out images from the DSP. That is just cool. Instant perfect image. We have several Bundles in the Annual and Holiday Catalogs that will do this for you and I’m really looking forward to playing around with them. That’s what you want to look for in value. What is the best value? How versatile is this Bundle? I get a lot of questions about that, so I should probably make a video to address it. I still have a few that I need to edit for you. It’s been a few extremely busy weeks/months/years.

Today’s card is a grungy Halloween card. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going with it first and changed color schemes in my mind about 100x, but I think it worked out. I tried to use accessories, embellishments, stamps, ink and paper, everything, in a different way. I loaded up the card with 4 layers with the 4th being the background for the card. The piece of Basic Black stripes on the left of the image circle is a stamp from Merry Cafe. I inked it up, stamped it and trimmed it out with my paper trimmer. The torn strip of copper is Washi tape from the Year of Cheer Specialty Washi Tape. I burnished it down very well onto the Very Vanilla cardstock. What’s different about this card is that you normally don’t see copper on Halloween cards and that’s what I love about this too. I used our Copper Metallic Thread to make a nest behind the cauldron, all of which is 1 image. I used my Stampin’ Write Markers to color in the image and sentiment different colors. I added some decent shimmer to the cauldron by coloring it first with the clear Wink of Stella glitter pen and then used a black marker to go over it. When you use markers to color in your images, be prepared to stamp them a few times to get a crisp image. I used my MISTI stamping tool to achieve this as the stamp set is clear mount and I can’t really see where I’m stamping. I don’t put the stickers on the back of the images because they don’t really stick well to the clear blocks and I don’t want to jump through hoops to apply adhesive to the back of the sticker to make it tacky. To me, it will impact the resale value in that you still have the sticker sheet available to whoever purchases it when you want to sell it, but while you’re using it, you won’t be inconvenienced, as in it still works for you while you own the stamp set and not keeping it pristine for somebody else while it’s a pain for you to use. Clear as mud?

For my orange, I mixed up Pumpkin Pie and Cajun Craze, but you can tell both colors are in there. You will be surprised to know I used 4 stamp sets to make this card. I have a Basic Black A2 side-folding card with an Old Olive mat. Those 2 elements are a bit on their own, but tied into the image panels colors. There’s a 1/4″ border between the Old Olive and Cajun Craze to almost introduce part 2 of the card. This is where I start adding my dimension with fun foam between the 2 layers. I distressed the Cajun Craze and Very Vanilla cardstock edges and sponged on Smoky Slate and Basic Gray. The Pumpkin Pie images are from Work of Art. The Basic Black strip panel is from The Little Things with the main cauldron image from Festive Phrases. The other images are from Timeless Textures. Since I made this card 5 days ago, I’m trying to remember where I grabbed the spider web from. At least I wrote the stamp sets down. The black glitter paper and bat punch are retired items. I actually had the bat punch ready to be boxed up for sale, but remembered it was in there and you know I had to use it. It was the perfect embellishment for this card in that space. I needed it. I also distressed my circle image panel and added dimension to that. Everything ties in and plays very well together.

Thank you so very much for stopping by to visit me today. We would love to have you play along with us this week at the Paper Craft Crew and hashtag your project on social media as #PCC256 or #papercraftcrew. I do owe our participants a big apology for not commenting the past 2 weeks. I will remedy that today. Life gets in the way and I feel awful for not commenting because your participation does count and we love what you create weekly and you inspire us too. Have a fabulous day and God bless.