Aloha, all!
I can’t believe that this is the last Saturday in September. Where did the month go? That’s the eternal question in this year of the pandemic. But I will have many more Christmas Cards as we get going full blast towards Christmas, so never fear. For today’s project, I’m reprising my Throwback Thursday theme and using another design from only four years ago that features 9 squares of printed papers as the main focus for a card front.
I’m CASE-ing Myself Again!
This is a card from 2016 that I found while I was looking for Throwback Thursday projects for this week. I called this card a Designer Series Paper Sampler. I called it that because I was using a sample of 9 different sheets in the By The Shore Designer Series Paper set (long since retired).
With a set of prints like that, the Calypso Coral Bakers Twine that I used for this was perfect to continue with the By the Shore scene. And that sentiment wasn’t retired too long ago – one of my favorites!
Reworking the Card as a Christmas Card
I couldn’t decide which of the two square-centric cards I wanted to use for this week’s Throwback Thursday post. So I “cheated” and chose both of them. For this one, though, I needed to make it a Christmas Card as I promised Christmas Cards on Saturdays in September.
And it’s also a sampler! These are 9 different designs from the Tis the Season Designer Series 6″ x 6″ Paper set. There are two reds and two greens in this set of papers. The four red prints in the corners have mostly the color Real Red, with the center mostly Cherry Cobbler. With the greens it’s a bit hard to tell. But I thought that there was enough of the Garden Green color to use Garden Green Cardstock as one of the accent colors for the card. I went back and forth on the reds, and chose Real Red Cardstock for the main layer of the card. The main reason was that I wanted the red color to be the featured color and I didn’t have any Cherry Cobbler ribbon for the project.
Laying Out the Squares
Cutting 1″ squares is a bit tricky. If I cut a piece of 4″ x 4″ paper and it’s a teeny bit – like 1/32″ – too large or too small on one side, you hardly notice. But when it’s a 1″ square, it suddenly becomes a big deal. And a 1″ square is kind of like a table leg. Trim a bit here and, ooops, it’s not even somewhere else. So to cut these squares I just try really hard to be exact and then don’t stress over it once I have them cut.
Placing the squares is a bit trickier. If the first square is off, they’re all off. So here’s my tip for the day: Get that center square placed first. These are 1″ squares, and I cut the Whisper White cardstock so that there would be a 1/8″ space all the way around. There’s also 1/8″ designed to be between the squares. So measure in from the left and down from the top of the Whisper White Cardstock and place a pencil dot. Adhere the center square with the upper left corner smack dab on that dot. After that, just make the squares about 1/8″ out from the left and right and top and bottom. The corner squares fit in perfectly after that.
The Other Elements In the Card
That Real Red Ribbon that I was talking about is one of the ribbons in the All The Trimmings Ribbon Combo Pack. When I was deciding what – and how – to stamp as a sentiment on the card, it was the gold edges on that ribbon that made me decide to use Gold Stampin’ Emboss Powder (along with Versamark Ink and the Heat Tool) for the sentiment.
The sentiment that I chose is one that you’ll kind of find in the Perfectly Plaid Stamp Set. I say “kind of” because it’s only part of a larger greeting. This is about the third time I’ve looked at that stamp and thought, “I’d really just like the Christmas Cheer part.” If the stamp had been rubber, I would simply have used a Stampin’ Write Marker to color just the words that I wanted. But this is a photopolymer stamp set, and they don’t like the markers as well as the rubber stamps do. So I hesitantly got out my Paper Snips – and I snipped that sentiment away from the rest of the greeting. I can use them together again if I wish. But now I can just use the Christmas Cheer all by itself.
The final touch was a bit of embellishment of the squares layer. As I’d chose not to tie the ribbon around the area of the squares, I wanted to accent them a bit. So I added some Gold Glitter Enamel Dots at the four corners of the middle square.
The Sketch
Back when I posted the original card, I also posted a sketch so you could try this card yourself. As this is a reprise of pretty much the same card, here’s the sketch!
The Bottom Line
This is a great card for any time and any occasion, especially to show off some of the designs in a Designer Series Paper set. I should make one for every set of Designer Series Paper that I have. Why not you?!
Have fun with whatever you stamp.
