Into the Woods

The Stampin’ Up!® Holiday catalog is full of amazingly gorgeous and fun stamps, papers, accessories, and bundles. I went way overboard with my purchases in August. The good news is I have lots of Bonus Coupons to use this month!

One of my favorite bundles is the Winter Woods Stamp Set and In the Woods Framelits Dies. You can bundle them and save 10%, of course. And, for the record, there is no “into the woods” product. I used that as a title so you’d have an ear worm for awhile. (Here’s the trailer for the movie version of the Sondheim musical.) It was mostly for my friend Darrah Hopper who was always giving me ear worms with her references to musicals.

Here’s the third card we made in September classes.

This is a CASE of a card I found on Pinterest. I changed a few things. First, the original artist used the Twinkle Twinkle Designer Series Paper (DSP). It looked awesome, but I realized I didn’t have enough paper for everyone. So we made our own paper. Instead of stars, we have snowflakes, thanks to the Timeless Textures Stamp Set and Whisper White Craft Ink.

The “bare trees” in the original card were die-cut from Sparkle Glimmer Paper. Here’s the Glimmer Paper story. When you’re die-cutting from the glimmer paper, especially using a detailed die like the “bare tree” (every time I said that in class, people thought, “Bear Tree.” So funny!), it works better to die-cut from the back, so the trees are reversed. I had to cut 48 of these trees for class. I decided to use Whisper White Cardstock instead, because it was a little easier. The glimmer paper is gorgeous, and for one or five cards, it’s a breeze. But for 24 cards? Whisper White won. My first plan was to have everyone cut their own trees, but it took a little longer than I had planned at the first class. For the second class, I decided to cut one set for each person (they were making two each of this card). But then I remembered one of the attendees was 8-3/4 months pregnant, and I didn’t want her going into labor at the Big Shot, so I die-cut everyone’s trees for the second class.

We used a Sponge Dauber and Frost White Shimmer Paint over the trees to give them a little glitz since we didn’t use the glimmer paper. It doesn’t photograph well, but it looks really fun in person.

I wanted a “white on white” effect, so the base card is a 5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″ piece of Whisper White Cardstock, scored and folded to create a 4-1/4″ x 5-1/2″ card. The next layer is a 4″ x 5-1/4″ Whisper White layer, added to the card with Stampin’ Dimensionals. The sentiment from the Winter Woods Stamp Set is stamped on this layer using a Night of Navy Classic Stampin’ Pad.

The Night of Navy layer is also 4″ x 5-1/4″, but we either cut or tore the bottom to create a snow scene. It works best to cut/tear this layer first, then use it as a guide for the sentiment placement.

Finally, we added the trees. The evergreen tree is two die-cuts. We added the full tree to the card with Stampin’ Dimensionals, then the 3-D die-cut was added using a Fine-tip Glue Pen. Make sure you do not put glue behind the fluffy boughs. You want them to curl up a bit, and if you glue them down, they won’t fluff. A bone folder works really well to curl the boughs a bit.

The Basic Pearl Jewels add so much to the trees! I need to add one or three more. I kept mine to a minimum so I wouldn’t run out of pearls for class. But I only have four on my tree, and even numbers just look a little wonky. I see where I’m going to add the other three to my tree.

Thanks for stopping by Stamping with Buffy. Tune in tomorrow for a Watercolor Wash Challenge with Susan, Jackie and me. I can’t wait to see their cards! Have a lovely day!

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