Sneak Peek: Warm Winter Wishes and Holiday Hospitality

Today we have two sneak peeks for you, the first is Carolyn King's highly anticipated set, and her second to benefit the Alzheimer's Association: "Warm Winter Wishes".

This card uses Pure Luxury White for the adorable snowman image and the new Cranberry Tart for the base. Background DP is from the Cosmo Cricket Jolly by Golly pack, isn't that cute like a festive front yard?? I cut the Copic colored snowman out and made a sloping bank of snow using a rotary cutter to make a curvy cut and running a black marker along the edge to match the line art snowman. Then I made a popped up little "thought balloon" for his greeting (because only Frosty can talk, you know!) made from a Petite Scalloped Oval Nestabilitie, an oval and Cropodile punch! I loved the scene just the way it was, so decided not to add any more to it.But I had to make a little coffee sleeve with another sheet from the pack so I could use the little coffee cup from the set! TIP: if you save a cardboard sleeve from a coffee purchase, you can easily wrap it with your DP without needing to measure or make a template by putting Scor-Tape along each side and then pressing to the back of your DP and cutting around it. This DP has little cups and snowmen on it anyway, then I made a little medallion by masking the cup and stamping this fun "Love" word background (also from the set!) over it, then die cut with my Classic and Scalloped Circle Nestabilities. Be sure to attach the medallion with Scor-Tape as well, to keep it from popping off. Now you or your recipient will have a cute coffee wrap they can use all season! Deliver the hot drink with the card or fill the empty cup with candy!

The next card uses the Free with Three "Holiday Hospitality" set, one of the main images is this large ornament, but today I did something a little different with it. I have to give credit to my 4 yr old William for this idea, who was checking out the new un-inked rubber on my desk. "What's that?" he asked pointing. I held it up by the top to look like it was hanging and replied, "See?" thinking he would figure it out on his own looking at it that way. "Oh! a candle!" he said immediately. Well, I thought that was pretty cool, it does look like like one of those little ball oil lamps! (That's m'boy, out of the box, at age 4 LOL! it's a family thing... ;)* So I colored the hanging loop to look like a little flame and covered it with Stardust Stickles.

I colored the different sections and added these 2 mm adhesive rhinestones strips to the spaces in between, these will be fun to bling up with your different embellishments! Card base is the new Pure Luxury Vibrant Violet. The "Hip to Be Square" background border is colored with red to make the focal point look like it's triple matted, I love that! I popped up the "candle" and colored made a little shadow underneath. TIP: I used the lines of the square frame image for placing my focal point, with the vertical running through the middle of the flame and the horizontal going through the rhinestones, really pulls your focus to the bling and greeting.

Head over to GinaK's blog to add your comment to her blog entry for a chance to win the stamp sets being previewed tonight our blogs! Then, check in on Carolyn King's blog - the Illustrator of Warm Winter Wishes.
Here are the rest of the links to the Design Team Members participating in the hop tonight:

Cathy Tidwell
Cindy Lawrence
Donna Baker
Emily Giovanni
Erika Martin
Jessica Fick
Kurtis Amundson
Lee Murphy
Lynn Mercurio
Tami Mayberry
Theresa Momber

Nina Brackett

CenterStage Spotlight Designers:

Joy Hadden
Lori McAree

We'd love to have you join us at our Release party Thursday over on SCS starting at 7pm CST. There will be lots of chatter, samples, contest questions, and challenges - you won't want to miss it! Check out Theresa's discussion if you're new to our Release parties for some helpful information to get you started.

* and after he said candle, he thought of one other clever thing you can make with the image, not an ornament, can you guess? :)