Christmas cards Stampin Up style

I have two cards to share with you tonight. When I first saw the new Stampin Up catalog this past summer, I completely fell in love with the stamp set called "Gifts of Christmas". Despite the fact that I have at least a half a dozen Christmas stamp sets, I just had to buy it. I am sure you all know how that is, right? Then, I received my Holiday mini catalog, and was hooked once again on almost everything in it. So, I placed my order and one of the things I ordered was the new Sizzix Textured Impressions Embossing folder, called "Petals a Plenty". Oh and lets not forget the new shimmer paint. If you have been following my blog for awhile, you know that I simply adore anything that shines, shimmers, or sparkles. Love my bling! So, this card idea popped into my head and it has alot of shimmer on it. Shimmer paint, shimmer card stock, shiny embossing powder. Yep, gotta have some shimmer! Ok, I will quit blabbing and show you my stuff; so to speak.


The card base is Stampin Up's Handsome Hunter, the embossed panel is Real Red card stock, and is accented with the Platinum Shimmer Paint in the SU Holiday Mini catty. Basically, as you can see it is Silver Shimmer paint. It is hard to see, but the image is stamped on SU Shimmer White card stock, heat embossed with Silver embossing powder. I heat embossed the image a second time, and cut out the dove, so that I could pop it up with some dimensionals. It s hard to see in the photo, but I used different a thickness of dimensionals at different places on the dove, to give it a little different look. There are two ways to achieve this, either buy your dimensionals in two different thicknesses, or simply layer your stampin Dimensionals on top of each other. Layer two together where you want your image to be higher, and only one where you want it to be lower. I have an enlarged photo below to show this better. See how the center of the wings are higher than the tips of the wings. Trust me when I tell you that it looks way better in person.

The image is also matted on some Stampin Up Silver Shimmer card stock. The next card involves the smaller image of the same stamp set. I had cut my embossed Red piece into two different sections, so I put my thinking cap back on and decided on the card layout below to use the other red piece. It is basically the same layout, but inverted in the vertical direction. All of the supplies are the same except a couple of embellishments and cutting tools. I used my regular and scalloped Spellbinder's Rectangular Nestibilities to cut out my stamped image, which is popped up with some dimensionals. I added some Silver Faux pearls to each corner, and a white bow down at the bottom to balance out the card layout.

I hope you like what you see.

While I still have your attention, I have got to tell you about something that I ate at a wedding reception over the weekend. We were served a plate with a piece of roasted chicken stuffed with something, white rice cooked in chicken broth, and buttered cooked asparagus. Keep in mind that I am a plain ordinary food kind of person. This was my first time trying asparagus, and I am happy to report that I liked it. Now, this chicken stuffing stuff was pretty darn tasty, so I asked our server what ingredients were in it. She said she would ask the chef. After a few minutes, she came back and told me about some ingredients that I would have never guessed and certainly would not have purchased at the grocery store. They were: Spinach, Sweet Red Peppers, and the biggest surprise.....Goats Cheese! First, I hate spinach and sweet red peppers, and just the thought of trying Goats Cheese would have made me hurl had I known this before I ate it. So, now all I can do is laugh, because dog-gone it, that stuff was absolutely positively fabulous!!!!!! Broaden your horizons this week and try something out of the ordinary to eat, ya never know what you might like!

Keep Stamping...................Blessings, Lisa