Art With Heart "Heart of Christmas 2019" - Week 14

Christmas Time Is Here - Well not quite, but its just around the corner!

Holiday Happenings:
Home again now after 2 weeks in WA. I had a marvellous time in what seemed like 2 seperate holidays. I started my holiday with an Elijah House conference that was held at Paradox Church in Baldivis. Folk had gathered from around Australia as well as 3 coming from international places. It was a great conference and lovely to get to know the other 5 SA delegates as we shared an Air BnB. The second part of my holiday started Sunday week ago, when a fellow crafter - my up-line and a lovely lady, Kathryn Mangelsdorf, flew in and we traveled down to the beautiful Margaret River for 4 nights. We then spent 4 night's in Perth to attend Stampin' Up's one-day conference - On Stage and do some sightseeing.  On Stage was such a wonderful time, catching up with crafting friends and making new friends; getting our hands on the new Mini Catalogue early, being given some of the new products plus so many hugs, laughs and inspiration. That's enough of my holiday ...

Christmas Time is Here - a card to share:
In last week's blog hop I was inspired by many of the team's cards using the Christmas Time is Here Bundle, so I just had to give it a go this week. The bundle includes a double stamp set, one in cling red rubber that stamps a line drawing of a gorgeous spray of Christmas roses, pine leaves, rose leaves, pine cones and berries. The 2nd set has photopolymer stamps to be stamped over the line drawing to add colour and shading. Of course you can also use a range of other methods of colouring, but today, I used the distinctive stamps. Here is my Christmas card:

It was love at first sight when I saw the Christmas Time is Here bundle. The whole suite is only available for a limited time - until it's sold out! If you love it like I do, please don't wait - it could sell out at any time. I would love to help you if you would like the Christmas Rose stamp set, Roses dies, Gold Shimmer ribbon or Gold Glitter Enamel Dots. You can buy them individually, or the stamp set and dies also come as a bundle with 10% discount. Also available is gorgeous Speciality Designer Series Paper that includes touches of gold in many designs.

I really like that this Christmas design with roses is not fully traditional. Traditional colours can be used for a more Christmas feel - or non traditional colours also look great, depending on your preference. I have used traditional colours in inks (ie Golden Glitz Delicata Metallic ink for the line drawing, Merry Merlot for the rose, Poppy Parade for the berries and Mossy Meadow for the pine and rose leaves, and Soft Suede for the pine cones, but added some Sahara Sand card stock to the Whisper White and Gold Foil as a little twist. I have seen a range of colour combinations with this stamp set making both Christmas and non-Christmas cards - you can't go wrong with this beautiful suite.

The roses spray was die cut using the Roses dies and raised up on Dimentionals. Both pieces of the background card stock have been embossed, the top piece of Sahara Sand was embossed with the Tufted 3D embossing folder, while the Whisper White card stock was embossed with the Subtle 3D embossing folder after stamping the greeting in Golden Glitz ink. This embossing folder is fan...tastic and I have used it over and over again on so many projects as it adds texture without distraction.

I added some golden bling with a little gold filigree cut from Gold Foil using a die from the Roses dies; two pieces of the gorgeous Gold Shimmer ribbon have been tucked under the roses spray and 7 Gold Glitter Enamel dots were distributed around. You may have spotted the gold dot on the rose. It was added because a drop of water accidentally dripped onto the rose nearing the end of the project and left a washed out spot. Embellishments are such a blessing when you need to hide an accident or smudge!

The photopolymer stamp set for colouring the image is disINKtive. This is a special stamp design technique created by Stampin Up, which provides a multi-demential image in one stamp and by inking the stamp once with a single colour. You can see the effect on the roses. To gain this effect with other stamp sets you would need to undertake multistep stamping with a number of colours. It is really amazing.

The image below shows the centre of the card. I mounted the Whisper White card stock on a slightly larger piece of Sahara Sand card stock, stamped one of the greetings from the Christmas Rose stamp set in Golden Glitz ink and added a tiny stitched heart under the greeting that had been cut using the Stitched Be Mine dies. This little heart was on my work table, left over from another project and I thought it would add the perfect touch of gold.

That's it for me for this week's blog hop, however, there is so much more inspiration to be found. The talented and lovely Sharon Davern is hosting the Heart of Christmas 2019 blog hop this week – to check out the team’s festive creations you can visit Sharon’s page by clicking here. She has the links to all this week's blog hoppers.

Thanks for dropping by and taking time to check out my blog.  💕🐾