December Guest Designer: Carissa Wiley

Hello friends!

So happy to welcome another Friday! And today we have our first post from December guest, Carissa Wiley! I love her style, her ability to add so much detail and dimension amazes me!

I know you will love what she has to share!

_________________________________

Hi everyone!  It’s Carissa here and I’m excited to be sharing here on the Neat & Tangled blog.  I’ll be creating a few projects this month using some fabulous products from Neat & Tangled.  I hope you enjoy!

Today I’ll be using the Santa’s Ride stamp set and coordinating dies to create a fun holiday card.  Christmas is coming soon, and I’m still busy making cards to share with family, friends, teachers, coworkers…and the list goes on.  

I started by stamping my images, the sleigh, present and bag full o' gifts, using Memento Tuxedo Black Ink.  I did some simple Copic coloring to color my images (I'll list the colors used below) and then ran them through my Big Shot with the coordinating dies.  This gives perfectly cut images every time.  I love the option of having coordinating dies with my stamp sets, because it gets me more mileage out of my stamps.  

I toyed with the idea of making this a one-layer card by masking each of the images, but in the end, I decided I would color and die cut each of the images.  This gives a bit more dimension to the card.  If you want to keep your project a little flatter for mailing, masking may be the way to go.  When masking, always work from the foreground of your scene to the back.  In this case, I would stamp the sleigh, and then stamp the present and then the bag o' gifts, masking each one along the way. 

I did end up doing a little masking for this card.  I used a nesting circle die to cut a mask.  I used some Eclipse Masking Paper, but you could use some thing typing paper with removable adhesive if you don't have masking paper.  In order to get perfect placement of my mask, I positioned the positive space (the circle portion) of the mask on to my card front, and then applied the negative space of the mask (the part with the window).  This allows me to see exactly where my window will be on my card front.  Then I removed the positive mask (the circle portion) and did a little ink blending to create my sky.

I left the mask in place to apply some embossing paste to this area as well.  By leaving the mask in place, I'll end up with snow just in that circle area.  I used a stencil and some white embossing paste.  I applied the embossing paste rather thick so that my snow had lots of dimension.  Once I removed the stencil, I added some Prisma glitter over the top of the embossing paste.  This adds a little sparkle to my snow.  I left that to dry for about 30 minutes before moving on.

I used some Metallic Platinum Sparkle Embossing Powder to emboss my sentiment and create a coordinating strip of glitter paper for the edge of my card.  Using embossing powder to create coordinating paper is a great way to pull your card together and give it a cohesive look.  Just apply your ink directly to the paper, add your embossing powder and heat.  It's also fun to apply the embossing powder to small embellishments on your card too!

I did something I don't normally do on this card.  I stamped a sentiment on the inside.  I usually leave the inside of my cards blank so that I can write a note, but I love the way that Believe and the word magic tie together.  I still believe in the magic of Christmas. :)

I finished the card off by adding some embellishments.  I added some mini bells and some greenery to the back of my sleigh.  So festive!  And to add some sparkle to my sleigh, I gave it a generous coat of Wink Of Stella.

I've created a video tutorial walking you through the creation of this card.  You can check that out over on my YouTube channel or over on my blog.

Thanks for stopping by today!  I hope you've enjoyed this project.  And until next time, I hope you have a fabulous day!

Carissa