Once again I'm not trying to rush winter, but for those of you anxious to get your Christmas cards underway, let's have a look at this snowman card. The main image is from Stampendous and we have added the die-cut tree that he is holding. The buckles really add a nice touch for a ribbon embellishment. If you are tired of trying to find metal buckles on the market, the buckle set is from Joy Crafts. You have the versatility of four shapes that can also be embossed. The buckle on the ribbon has not been embossed, and the buckle on the little oval tag has been embossed so that you can see the difference. The background embossing is a favourite folder of  mine from Leane Creatif. I love the fact that it is large enough to emboss a 5 1/2 inch square background



 



The tree in the snowman's hand is from the set below. This is a set of two dies. We ended up using the largest tree from the cluster for the front of the card, and the smaller two from the cluster inside on the verse panel. We didn't actually used the largest tree in the package which measures 1 inch by 2.9 inches high. This die-set is great for creating smaller forests.



This series of cut-and-emboss dies from Anna Griffin are absolutely beautiful. I do need to pass on a word of caution that you will need to work with shims to find out the right pressure for this beautiful, intricate die. In the card, Bev has used the ice-silver shimmer cardstock which creates an elegant appearance for this cutout. The print cardstock that she has used in behind is a taupe mini-print. Keep tone on tone in mind when you're trying to create some simple feeling of elegance. The verse is from Impression Obsession and the font just adds to the overall look of the card.

Keep in mind when you're using a die this size (5 x 7) that it is very easy to cut-down to the size you need when you have an open floral design like this. If you are using a Sizzix BigShot, in order to emboss, you'll need to use your tan embossing mat, one cardboard shim, and remove the top flap from your platform stack.

Sometimes sympathy cards can be a challenge to do at the last minute. For me, a sympathy card wants to remain rather quiet, without too many layers and embellishments. In the card below we embossed about 1 inch at the top of the blue panel and we used the Magenta cloverleaf stem stamped once in Adirondack Espresso and both second and third stampings were misted with water first before stamping down.

The addition of the gold sticker on the ribbon allows you to put a sentiment on without adding lots of layers.

This is a lovely die from Memory Box, Fresh Foliage. The nice thing about foliage is it can be any colour you want to make it. In this card that Bev designed, she has used an alcohol ink background, and inset the cut-out die into straight black card for the middle panel. The dragonflies were cut from glitter paper and then coloured with alcohol inks as well.

The versatility of this die would allow you to cut the image into pieces to add to any other card design. The dragonflies are from Penny Black.