Lots of Glitter Without the Mess!

Aloha, all!

     We're just finishing up the 4th week of the wonderful Create with Connie and Mary Holiday Edition!  I have been designing and making projects that are very different from those that I usually feature here, even during blog hops.  Connie and Mary encourage – actually require! – original designs and well-constructed projects and tutorials for everything that we do for them.

     For the Saturday challenges, though, we are not held to the original design standard too closely, and I'm sure that you've seen lots of cards in different places that use three stockings made from Holiday Mini products.  But for this one, I wanted lots of glitter to accent the color challenge for the week.  The challenge was to use Real Red, Wild Wasabi and Cherry Cobbler, the colors featured in the Holly Berry Bouquet product suite in the Holiday Mini. 

     I have to confess that there's only the slightest bit of Cherry Cobbler in this card – in the holly berries on the Holly Berry Bouquet Specialty Designer Series Paper at the top of the card and in the card base itself.  OK, I got that out of my system and headed for the "Real" Red as well as the Wild Wasabi green.  (I have to tell you that I was really disappointed when Glorious Green was retired from the Stampin' Up! collection; but Wild Wasabi has grown on me – just wish it had a different name!)  And, of course, I wanted all that red to be glittery!  That was really easy because not only do we have the Real Red Glimmer Brads and Red Glimmer Paper, we also have the glitter designs on two sheets of the Designer Series Paper set.  That's why the word, "Specialty," appears in the product name.  The striped and polka dotted sheets are glittered!

     So now that I had 3 different sheets with glitter, I just punched each of the sheets using the new Stocking Builder Punch and mixed and matched the results.  One trick that I used was to cut up smaller pieces of the designer paper and arrange them in the punch so that the designs fit the shape I was punching, especially with the stripes.  So it's no accident that the large stripe and the one polka dot fit perfectly in the heels of the stockings, or that the stocking and cuff are punched so that the stripes run parallel with the design.  It just took a bit of care and I didn't waste much paper at all.  Love the result, too!

     For the basic design, I wanted this to look like stockings hung "by the chimney with care."  But with no fireplace in my Stampin' Up! collection, I had to make do with a shelf and a plain wall, which is what I have in my house.  So after I created the "shelf" with the Red Glimmer Paper, I embossed the Wild Wasabi "wall" using the Sizzix Stripes Textured Embossing Folder. 

     I wrapped the whole scene with a mat of Red Glimmer Paper, a teensy sliver of Whisper White, and mounted it all onto a Cherry Cobbler greeting card base.

     And after I finished the whole project, there wasn't the slightest speck of glitter sticking to anything or anyone!  Love that Stampin' Up!'s looking out for the welfare of my vacuum cleaner

     I hope you'll check out the other designs for this week's color challenge over at Create with Connie and Mary.  That site is always free, and we're all posting our challenge cards there as well as in the Holiday Edition subscription site.  If you haven't subscribed to the Holiday Edition, you can do so any time and have access to everything in the entire program – for one year!  But, of course, now's the time to subscribe because the 2011 Stampin' Up! Holiday Mini Catalog is still in effect for another 2 and a half months!

     Hope to see you there!  And I hope you'll have fun with whatever Holiday Mini products you've already got.  Just 10 more weeks 'til Christmas!