HLS Christmas Challenge - May - Gifts

Welcome to the HLS Christmas Challenge.  The challenge for the month of May is Gifts.

The May Christmas Challenge is sponsored by Happy Little Stampers.Shop

Winner will receive one stamp set from HLS

 

Let's get started with what I've done for this challenge. Had several techniques I wanted to try out with a couple of gift dies that were in the stash..

 

 

- Cottage Cutz die using Sookwang tape, then applied Gilding Flakes over the top of it.  EF was inked with Delicata Gold and embossed using paper from an old 12x12 Christmas pack. This particular EF cuts deeply and that's why some white shows in the embossing. Used a sponge to go over that lightly with the gold ink. (message to self: Emboss 2 papers when doing this, so the folder does not emboss so deeply.) Added some gold ribbon placed like a wrapped package. Then decorated the ribbon with Nuvo Crystal Drops (this was Apple Green). Previously I've never had much luck using Liquid Pearls to shape this kind of embellishments. Am pleased to say this Nuvo product is working much better for me..and when the pearls were dry, they held the shape. Easy to use the bottle tip without clogging too. Hope it stays this way!  The sentiment is a small sticker.

 

 

 Another Cottage Cutz Stacked Gifts die cut from a different brand of double sided sticky paper - which I discovered did NOT work very well with the gilding flakes unless I used some extra glue. After recutting the die, used versamark, and the WOW Pearl Gold. Added a few Nuvo pearls. This time another EF was used to emboss a Coordinations c/s - which is much thicker than the paper used in the first card, and worked better. Used a sanding block to bring out the core color. Again, wrapped as a 'present'; stamped a little package, colored with copics and WoS, and punched with a SU scalloped punch. Still playing with the Nuvo crystals. Sentiment sticker.

 

Since I was not best pleased with either of the above cards, tried once more to do a card I was happier with the results.

 Boo-boo on the placement of the right hand package. Did not notice this until I saw the photo.

 Boo-boo fixed with placing the package ribbon in the proper position





used 2 S/B bracket dies to cut the edges to fold over the inside of this card. Fussy cut some gifts from an old foil 12x12 Paper Studio cardstock stack, and tied with a gold ribbon

PBlack clear Party Time image, colored with copics, WoS. Added in a Woodware Forest tree stamped in green, then embossed with clear.  Used Copic W gray to ground the scene. Matted with green and gold mats, tucked in another present from the foil paper stack. Sentiment is from the HLS Mixed Christmas Sentiments, stamped in versamark, heat embossed with Ranger's Queens Gold.

THEN using some bits from the You-know-where pile, made one last card, because I wanted to use a foil set of the Cottage Cutz gift die that had been made while I was trying different products.

Cottage Cutz die, from the non-Sookwang tape, (it's sticky, but not sticky E-nough!); added some Nuvo glue, burnished on some Deco foil, then ran through the Big Shot. This actually looks much better IRL than it does in the photo. All the white patches you can see in the photo, are not visible to the naked eye! Had this snippet from Brusho play, which had been embossed. It has sort of a 'leather' look to it. The turquoise looked nice with this (at least I thought so!). The blue bubbles border is from another Brusho play, and the sentiment was die cut from a snippet of white water color paper. Glued this down, then colored with a Turquoise Pentel Slicci pen (it looks blue in the photo, but is really a turquoise that quite matches the foil). Added a bit of WoS over the top of this, matted on a turquoise top fold card. Whew!

Hope you will join in with this fun challenge, get a head start on building a Christmas card stash for 2016 & perhaps win a fab prize too!

PLEASE REMEMBER YOU DO NOT HAVE TO USE HLS STAMPS TO ENTER OUR CHALLENGES

Thanks for joining me today. Big hugs.