Christmas/Holiday Card #13 - Purple Ornaments

Several years ago, one of the buildings at the Financial District in San Francisco had a Christmas tree decorated with all purple trimmings.  I thought it was gorgeous and everyday I passed by it I smiled and thought to myself that next year I'll have a purple Christmas tree.  Every Christmas since then I've tried but I never end up with a completely purple tree because each year I would still hang my favorite ornaments and they're not purple.

Yesterday, I thought of that purple tree again and that train of thought led to this purple card.  I've done quite a few whimsical cards already so I'm going for elegant this time.  What do you think?  Elegant enough?

Lots of dry embossing here.  The background used Woodgrain embossing folder, not traditional, but I like the effect here.  The ornaments were die cut first then positioned in the Vintage Wallpaper embossing folder individually.  I piled on the pearls for contrast and "hanged" them with silver strings.

The photo above was taken with natural light and shows the true color.  I turned on the overhead light for the picture below and got this gorgeous shade.... love it!

If you'd like to see other cards using these Ornament dies and the coordinating stamp set, I have them posted HERE.

Thanks for checking in today.  If you have any questions or comments, please don't be shy and say something.  You can even point out my grammatical errors, after all English is my second language and when I'm in a hurry, it shows.

Until the next post ...........  Cheers!!!

Christmas Cards 2012 - Part 1

September is normally too early for me to be making Christmas cards and these cards were made in August.!!  Back in June, I won one of the giveaways from our group meeting.  I don't think I ever mentioned here that I am a Stampin' Up Demonstrator hobbyist.  I occasionally attend group meetings and workshops to get new ideas and spend a day with a group of talented artists.

At our June meeting, my upline Patty Bennett told us to write down on a piece of paper our name and one item that we would like to get from the upcoming Holiday Catalog and she will draw one name.  She picked my name from the bucket and I selected the Ornaments Keepsake Bundle which consist of a nine-piece set of clear stamps called Ornament Keepsakes plus the coordinating eight-piece dies called Holiday Ornaments Framelit dies.  Woohoo, I was elated since I never win anything from raffles like that.

I didn't get my actual prize until early August since items from the Holiday Catalog were not available until August first.  And to show my appreciation, I tried to make some cards to share with our group right away.  I quickly realized that I am not so keen on the ornaments as my main focus for card making since I have been playing and creating with ornaments the last two Christmas seasons.  I struggled with the layout and design but I finally managed to create something I can live with.

This one is another center-step card.  The card base was embossed with an embossing folder and all the elements were heat embossed in white embossing powder.  This is the most elaborate of the three samples I made.  I was going for a non-holiday look using holiday stamps but ended up with a poinsettia looking focal point so it's a holiday card after all.

This is the side view, you'll see why it's called a center-step card.

This card is more traditional and I think I achieved the clean and simple look I was going for.  Again, all elements were heat embossed in white embossing powder.  I was too lazy to dig for a better sentiment.

Lastly, my favorite!  I will actually make more of these and send them out this Christmas.  I had this layout in mind and I was able to execute my vision pretty quickly.  When I finished the card, I thought it looked retro and named the photo file 'retro Christmas'  but when my niece saw it she said "Oh, this one is very modern."  You be the judge.

 All supplies used were from Stampin' Up.