Creative Medium Metallic and Iridescent are creamy pastes that can be stenciled, spread, or dabbed on for gorgeous texture and colour. The iridescent colours are an interference colour that shows up best on dark backgrounds. A light background colour will leave you with a pearl looking finish and very little colour. You can add drops of pigment reinker to create a two-tone effect, as well as many other options for changing the available colours.

In this page below, we used the Iridescent medium to add tissue paper (which had been coloured with Stazon Inks) to white cardstock.

Here we used the Iridescent Paste coloured with reinker to stencil a busy image. More colour was added with Stazon Inks and Delicata Metallic Inks and some Pico Embellisher for splatter.

Again using a stencil, and some Iridescent Paste, we created the look below. Stazon Ink has been added to the surface as well as Copper Delicata on the black background.

In the design below, we have used one folded card at 4 3/4" x 6 1/2", and a layer that is 4 1/4" x 6". Then we started with low tack tape one inch wide on either side of the layer. Abandoned Coral Distress Ink was used to colour the centre of the panel in varying intensities from dark to light. Stamp the carnation at the bottom of the layer and colour with Abandoned Coral Distress Marker and Peeled Paint Distress Marker. Remove the low-tack tape and use a decorative border die to cut the panel into three pieces as shown. Some decorative clear gems were addded to the layer. Each of the three panel pieces has been lifted with foam tape.

The florals on this set from Friskars are lovely botanical images. You have a poppy, a peony, a carnation, and some differnt buds to choose from. Stamping some flowers this time of year will hopefully get our spirits up looking forward to spring!

Let's get away from Christmas cards for a moment. With the weather the way it's been, we might as well think about fall grapevines. The background in the card below was done with watercolour paper, and Nuances from Magenta. We then used the negative of the die-cut as a stencil, to create the green leaves in the background. We then layered the actual cut-out on top of the other two layers.

The printed paper is from Hot Off the Press. I feel that this paper complemented our watercolour background very nicely. Both the Nuances and the Color Bursts pigmented powders are such fun just on a watercolour bacground. Once you start playing with them, you'll find all kinds of reasons and card designs to incorporate the papers you have produced.

The artwork in this winter-berries stamp even shows you where the berries are frosted! The stamp was stamped in VersaFine Sepia onto white cardstock. We did also stamp a second Majenta stamp of finer branches for more detail and colour. The berries and leaves were coloured with Tombow Markers. We added a bit of Broken China Distress Ink towards the top of the white panel to look like sky.  We then used a glue-pen and Stampendous Chunky White glitter to create the lovely snow-clusters. This stamp is a very practical winter stamp and as it can take you from December thru February, it is not just a Christmas stamp. To finish this card off, we die-cut an Interlace border from Nellie's.

The colour combination of turquoise and red is always one of my favourites. It is retro and modern all the same time!

This card was inspired by a card on Pinterest by Birgit Edblom. I love these pine forest dies. I know you have six million trees, however these are still a very different look than all of our other collections. It is both the size and the clustering that is appealing. The background colouring was achieved by working with Distress Stains. The moon has been coloured with Ranger's Perfect Pearls in Biscotti. Both of the top and bottom white panels have been cut with the Stitched Snowdrifts dies and both pieces have been raised with foam tape. Before any of the white layers were added to the card, the sky was splattered with Biscotti Perfect Pearls.

Any salutation would work for the front of this card. You might want to consider it as a winter birthday card! This would be one of those cards to mass produce if time were of the essence!

I love this playful kitten from Stampendous. In the card below, we have stamped him on brown velvet paper with black Versafine ink and clear embossed. We have touched up his eyes with some green chalk, and his nose with a Black Glaze pen. When you're working on velvet paper, it's very hard to colour with an ink source. This is the reasoning behind the chalk and the Glaze pen. The leaf panel was made using two maple leaves stamps from Frog's Whiskers, both positive and negative. The stamps were inked with VersaMark ink and stamped onto manila tag cardstock. We then clear embossed the images. Next, we distressed the panel with some fall coloured Distress Inks.

The banner was made by cutting a 5 1/2 inch strip of manila. After having stamped the 'Thinking of You' in the centre, we added two score lines about 1/4 inch apart on either side of the wording for the fold. A trick for cutting a v-notch in a strip is to simply put a pencil dot halfway in the width of the band, and cut into that dot. Without that dot, your eye doesn't see precisely mid-point and your cut will be off center. We added a die-cut distressed leaf to the top of the banner just to tie things together.

A number of the companies are designing beautiful treelines and forest images. This is a stamp from Impression Obsession. Bev has used watercolour paper and lightly coloured with shades of Pumice Stone, Ice-Spruce, Pine Needles and Scattered Straw Distressed Inks. A white cardstock snowbank was shadowed at the top, and glued to the top of the stamped image. Then the image was die-cut with a circle, and a bit of Pumice Stone was added at the edges for shadow. The die-cut circle was then raised with foam tape, and adhered back in place.

The card was finished with a Merry Christmas stamp, a tight frame of grey cardstock, and then to a mottled grey and white card. It is a very easy twist on a standard Christmas card.