Countdown to Christmas! Using up that last bit of Christmas Paper!

Aloha, all!

     Well, for the 3rd time this month, I fibbed!  More about that in a minute.

     I went into the craft room today to make a card for The Diva Coffee Break Design Team, and found some last unused sheets of the Stampin' Up! Holiday Mini Designer Paper Set, Deck the Halls.  I used up a lot of it this season, and that's a good thing because it won't be around NEXT Christmas!  But the page I hadn't used was the one with all kinds of beautifully colored elements, including this lovely poinsettia, next to some text of phrases of Christmas Carols.

     If the poinsettia looks a little 3-dimensional, that's because it is.  I had two sheets of this paper left, and I went and clipped the poinsettia from the second sheet and gave it a little texture before I adhered it to the piece I'd cut out from the first sheet.  Notice how I have the edges of the flowers on the base sheet trimmed – I didn't cut through them to get the piece for the top layer of the card.  After I cut the petals on the flower, I used the Stampin' Up! Fiskars paper trimmer to cut just up to the point where I started to trim the flowers, from both the top and bottom edge.  Then I mounted the Designer Printed Paper onto layers of Crumb Cake (formerly called Kraft) and Always Artichoke card stock.  I cut a piece of Cherry Cobbler card stock just 1/4" smaller both height and width and tied a piece of Always Artichoke Seam Binding around it before adhering the Designer Paper layers to the whole card.  All of it is mounted on a Crumb Cake Card.

     I used some of Stampin' Up!'s Basic Rhinestones to accent the center of the layered Poinsettia and the center of the motif to the right of the word, "Joy."

     So the fib?  I didn't use one of the layouts from my new book.  This paper wanted to be a particular size, and I wasn't going to force it into a layout of its own.  But now that I look at the whole layout, I may just have to take the time to add it to the book before formal publication in January!

     And don't forget that I'm giving out two free copies of the book to people who comment on my blog this month and tell me why they'd really like to have this! 

     While you're getting your last minute holiday chores done, don't forget to stop and craft awhile – and have fun with it!