Becky and Melanie's Holiday Hop!

This blog candy giveaway is now closed. See post above for the winner.

  
Good morning!  Becky and I thought it would be great fun to team up for a little Holiday Hop today! We are showcasing Becky's new set, "Warm Woolen Mittens" along with Becky's new cut file "Grand Banners" and "Grand Banners - Winter Sentiments" and my newest set, "Lots of Letters" (clear  and rubber) today, along with a few of my designing friends' recent faves from me! Joining us are some dynamic designers that will knock your socks off with their beautiful work today!  Make sure you visit everyone's blog to leave a comment and be entered to win a clear "I do!" and "Beyond Baskets" stamp set! We will draw a winner randomly and announce Thursday morning!

Now on to today's projects!

 Today I have a sample using both Becky and my newest sets, Warm Woolen Mittens and Lots of Letters! I love how this design turned out and hope it gives you lots of ideas for other ways to frame the letters than the ones I included in the set, like, mittens, for instance! I stamped the outlines of the mittens in Memento Espresso Truffle, and because I didn't have any masks ready, I just went ahead and made them overlap, and colored in the little areas with a Blue Copic, just like the loops in the scripty greeting (and over parts of the knit pattern for accents), isn't that fun?! Then I centered a letter on each mitten to start my greeting, cut them out and popped them up, and added Becky's cute sentiment below. 

TIP:  Stamping out the Lots of Letters alphabet to create just shorter, large words on a card is a *great* way to incorporate them with part of another greeting, rather than spelling out a long one. Mixing fonts and letters sizes this way gives you cards and sentiments such a fresh feel.  I used a Spellbinders Matting Basics B die to trace a border with a marker and then added the little faux stitch detail to connect the greeting to it.  Card base is the beautiful new Powder Blue Pure Luxury!

 Next, I have a very simple card with Lots of Letters and the coordinating Pretty Patterns set (clear or rubber). This fun circles border looks terrific with circle framed letters (punched with a 3/4" circle and popped up), and I will be making some personalized cards and gift sets for the holidays.  Inks are Memento Teal Zeal, Summer Sky, Sweet Plum, Bahama Blue and cardstock is Powder Blue and Pure Luxury White.

 Finally, I had to share this card (because I love it so!) using the magnolia from Stately Flowers 3. It's one of my favorite images in the series, and I made it for a movie inspired challenge (favorite films, can you guess?*)  This is like the triple panel stamping technique, but way easier if you have Spellbinder Matting Basics dies!  Stamp just one piece of CS with the magnolia in hot pink.  Now place three nested rectangle dies from the set on top, centering each and run through your cutting machine. Leave the dies in place and sponge peach ink on top with a sponge dauber. Remove dies and cut two mats 1/8" larger from Passionate Pink to layer under smaller stamped mats.  

  Adhere to a Just Peachy Pure Luxury base.  I used one of the smallest dies in the set for the greeting and stamped the flower again on Ivory (in that same pink) and added just hints of color with Copics (E93, YG00, YG63) and cut out.  I stamped it one more time on Fresh Asparagus cardstock in Bamboo Leaves and cut them out to layer underneath the flower.

Here are the sets I used today:

Warm Woolen Mittens

Lots of Letters clear
and rubber

Pretty Patterns

Stately Flowers 3

 Happy holidays and happy hopping!  Don't forget to leave comments for more chances to win some stamps!

Designer Hop-

Becky Oehlers (Illustrator of Warm Woolen Mittens)  

Beate Johns

JJ Bolton

Laurie Schmidlin

Latisha Yoast

Michelle Woerner

Richard Breaks

Vera Yates

Tosh Leyendekker

Thanks for visiting today! And thanks to my fabulous guests!

*Steel Magnolias, using Shelby's wedding colors "Blush" and "Bashful"