Seasonal Potpourri for As You See It Challenge #168

Hey, Stampers! It's Friday and the weekend, which to crafters means More Time in the Craft Room! It also means there's a new challenge over at As You See It Challenge and this one (#168) is a sketch challenge, which is particularly appropriate for the season, given the conditions in our corner of the world! Here's the sketch:

And here is why I took the sketch pretty literally, making it a seasonal potpourri of snowflakes and Pool Party and Lemon Lime Twist:

It's a little hard to tell here, but it is snowing huge, gigantic snowflakes and has been for a couple of hours! I mean really huge! So I made a card with snowflakes, and in the process, used a few stamp sets I haven't used for a long time like Work of  Art, and Sheltering Tree, along with the Colourful Seasons stamp set, which has been taking a bit of a back seat to the Holiday and Occasions stamp sets!

• I used Work of Art to create the little pieces of chevron designs in the background. I used one of my favourite techniques, which I call the Whisper technique, to get only patches of the image stamped instead of the solid, full image. I inked up the stamp and laid it very lightly on the cardstock, then applied extremely light touches of pressure on different areas of the stamp, like a "whisper touch". I used Pool Party full strength but stamped off the Lemon Lime Twist once before applying the Whisper Technique.
• I used the smaller snowflake image from Colourful Seasons for the larger stamped snowflake in Pool Party, and the small snowflake image from Hang Your Stockings in Lemon Lime Twist. The snow flurry stamp from Sheltering Tree was used to fill in the gaps.
• The die cut snowflakes were made with the coordinating dies for Colourful Seasons, Seasonal Layers Thinlit Dies. I backed the cardstock with Multipurpose Adhesive Sheets before die cutting, so they were easy to apply, just like stickers.
• A piece of vellum punched with the 1 1/2" Circle Punch separated the two largest snowflakes.
• See the snippet of Lemon Lime Twist Mini Striped Ribbon  and the Silver Metallic Thread loops tucked in behind the vellum? The rhinestones in the snowflakes finish off the snowy look.

Pop on over to As You See It Challenge today and try your hand at our sketch this weekend!

In my last newsletter, I promised that I would be loading many of the photo tutorials that I had made for my past newsletters on to my blog site for you to download. These include past tutorials up to 4 months previous to the latest newsletter. I am sharing them with you for free, so just go to the top menu to the Photo Tutorial Tab and download to your heart's content.

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.


Product List

Work Of Art Clear-Mount Stamp Set [134114] $29.00	Work Of Art Wood-Mount Stamp Set [134111] $40.00	Sheltering Tree Photopolymer Stamp Set [137163] $31.00	Hang Your Stocking Photopolymer Stamp Set [142114] $26.00	Colorful Seasons Photopolymer Stamp Set [143726] $33.00
Colorful Seasons Photopolymer Bundle [145348] $69.25	Vellum 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [101856] $10.00	Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Thick Cardstock [140272] $9.25	Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [100730] $11.25	Pool Party 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [122924] $10.00
Lemon Lime Twist 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [144245] $10.00	Pool Party Classic Stampin' Pad [126982] $8.50	Lemon Lime Twist Classic Stampin' Pad [144086] $8.50	Lemon Lime Twist 3/8" (1 Cm) Mini Striped Ribbon [145611] $10.75	Silver Metallic Thread [138402] $4.00
Rhinestone Basic Jewels [144220] $6.75	Seasonal Layers Thinlits Dies [143751] $44.00	Big Shot [143263] $136.00	Big Shot Die Brush - New Configuration [144262] $16.50	Multipurpose Adhesive Sheets [144106] $13.50
Liquid Multipurpose Glue [110755] $5.25	Glue Dots [103683] $7.00

Merry Christmas from Playing with Papercrafting!

Well, the big day is almost here! You've decorated, baked, shopped, wrapped, cleaned, partied, crafted, mailed and spent countless hours getting ready to celebrate! Hopefully, now you'll be able to relax a little and enjoy the fruits of your labours, but experience tells me that you probably won't really get to put your feet up until Christmas dinner is done. I learned to enjoy Christmas amongst the busyness and noise of the season. There have been a couple of years where it was all too quiet and I really didn't enjoy that at all, so appreciate it while you can!

Since this is my last regular post before Christmas, I want to take this opportunity to wish all my readers and customers a very Merry Christmas and to thank you for continuing to be my readers and customers over the years! I hope you all have the chance to celebrate together in peace and love this weekend!

For those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, let me wish you Happy Holidays and extend the same wish for peace and love for you and yours this season!

Let's all try to reach out to someone this season and make it brighter for them. I have a feeling that this next year may be very difficult and we're going to need to stick together and help each other rather than turn against each other. Let's start that right now in the spirit of Christmas!

Here's an illuminated easel card that I made just for this occasion using the Hearth & Home Framelits:

• I tried to come up with some wainscoting for the wall, by using the Simply Scored tool to score some Whisper White cardstock to make bead-board, but in the end, die cutting the fireplace in the middle took out most of the scored lines and also flattened them a little so it doesn't look half as cool as it did at first. However, I did rescore the lines after die-cutting, the camera just doesn't pick them up very well. This side shot will show you, though:

• I cut the flames for the fireplace freehand from scraps of Gold, Red and Pumpkin Pie Glimmer Paper. I used Fast Fuse to adhere them together and then onto the Vellum cardstock that backs the card front.
• The Hang Your Stocking Bundle has larger stockings, but I noticed that there was one stamp and one framelit of a smaller size that was just the right proportion for the Hearth & Home Thinlits. I stamped one and die cut it and then just die cut another out of cardstock and added some of the decorations from the bundle to it.
• The mantle decorations consist of evergreen branches made with my old Martha Stewart leaf punch, various holly leaves and poinsettias and trees from the Hang Your Stocking stamp set, which all have coordination dies and 1/2" Circle punched pieces of Gold and Real Red Glimmer Paper.
• The sentiments are both from the Oh What Fun stamp set in the Annual Catalogue. To see how to make an illuminated easel card, check out this tutorial!

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List

Hang Your Stocking Photopolymer Stamp Set [142114]	Hang Your Stocking Photopolymer Bundle [143512]	Oh, What Fun Photopolymer Stamp Set [140386]	Gold Glimmer Paper [133719]	Red Glimmer Paper [121790]
Pumpkin Pie Glimmer Paper [142029]	Vellum 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [101856]	Presents & Pinecones Designer Series Paper [141986]	Sahara Sand 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [121043]	Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [100730]
Emerald Envy 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [141415]	Emerald Envy Classic Stampin' Pad [141396]	Real Red Classic Stampin' Pad [126949]	1/2" Circle Punch [119869]	Simply Scored [122334]
Christmas Stockings Thinlits Dies [141841]	Hearth & Home Thinlits Dies [139666]	Stitched Shapes Framelits Dies [145372]	Layering Ovals Framelits Dies [141706]	Big Shot [143263]
Paper Snips Scissors [103579]	Liquid Multipurpose Glue [110755]	Fast Fuse Adhesive [129026]	Glue Dots [103683]	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430]