Aloha, all!
I am absolutely amazed at how many of my long ago cards I can almost duplicate with Stampin’ Up! products that are current today. When it comes to Christmas, though, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, every year brings the same themes that are popular at Christmas time. One of them is certainly snowflakes. Yes, there was Snowflake Paper and Snowflake dies back in 2008. Go figure.
Love That Sparkle!
I made this card in November 2008 with two products that were featured in the Stampin’ Up! 2008 Holiday Catalog. One of the products was called, “Little Felt Flurries,” and there were so many cute snowflakes that I’m sure I must have used them all. The color of the snowflakes in this card was an old favorite, Baja Blue. The paper was from a set called, “Ski Slope.” If you’d like to read the post from 2008, click here.
And Still a Little Sparkle in 2020!
And here’s my project for 2020 – 12 years later! The snowflakes sparkle with a Rhinestone in the center! And once again Stampin’ Up! has produced a lovely set of papers with snowflakes and other snowy patterns for its holiday catalog – the 2020 August – December Mini Catalog. This sheet has snowflakes in several different blues. I chose to accent those with the Misty Moonlight Cardstock and the Misty Moonlight In Color Ribbon.
To separate the strip with the snowflakes with the sheet of printed paper, I used a strip of Whisper White Cardstock that shows 1/16″ above and below the Navy strip. (Check out my Tuesday blog post this week for a discussion of measurement calculations.)
The Snowflakes Are All the Same
I really liked that there was a variety of snowflakes available back in 2008. And there actually is a variety of snowflakes in the So Many Snowflakes Die set. But they’re all different sizes. I tried to use different sizes, but it didn’t give me the same feel as having three in a line that are the same size. Maybe next time I’ll just try different colors?
I’ve been using the snowflakes from this die set for a couple of weeks now. And I found that there are two tips for making good snowflakes. The first is to use the Thick Whisper White Cardstock to do the die cuts. It just doesn’t curl out as much as when I’ve used the regular weight of Whisper White. The second tip is that, whichever cardstock you use, use Multipurpose Liquid Glue to adhere them wherever. Just a little dot on each of the larger parts of the snowflake will tack it down nicely. For this one, I used a dot of glue on either side of the largest section of each leg and one in the middle. The one in the middle is especially important if you’re going to put at embellishment – such as the rhinestone here – onto it.
And That Teeny Tiny Sentiment!
In the original card the printed paper was light enough overall that I could just stamp directly onto the paper. But, no matter how hard I tried, this paper just wasn’t going to lend itself to that kind of stamping. I should have thought of that before I started with this design. But, where there’s a will there’s a way (my mother always cautioned me). I looked through all my holiday stamp sets and found this darling little sentiment in the Festive Post Stamp Set. So I simply stamped it onto a scrap of White cardstock, hand cut a little rectangle around it and to make a Misty Moonlight mat, and under the ribbon with a glue dot it went. Finished!
The Bottom Line
If you need some inspiration for a new card, there are lots of places to look online. But another great place to look is at your old projects. Sometimes you may wonder what made you make it like you did way back then. But that will get you thinking about what you might do differently today. Especially now that you’re much more experienced!
Happy Stamping!
