Right then, the last of my recent run of Triple Stamped cards,and I used the technique to create myself a dozen Christmas cards. Despite what it may seem, this is actually a good way of batch making cards that appear a little more work than they really are.The Snowflake one is the card made in the You Tube video.
Just so you know, this is quite a photo heavy post, lol.
First part was cutting all the layers, and choosing stamps.
I'll put the measurements used at the end of the post.
The first stamps I chose came from Chocolate Baroque sets, Holly Script & Mistletoe Script sets, both still available.
To the Holly, I added a couple of Card-io stamps, from a set called Festive Fircones, and also from a Rubber Stamp Tapestry peg stamp set called Cardinal in Holly.
I used Versafine Clair in Rain Forest for the stamping.
Before stamping the image stamps, I stamped and heat embossed in Gold detail powder, a sentiment on each one. I used 4 different sentiments.
The top two are from Hobby Art, the set is called Winter Wishes.
Bottom left is a very old stamp from Denami, which used to be wood mounted. Bottom right is from a Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous set called Scribbled Woodland.
My four pieces, all stamped and ready for matting. Word of advice, separate and layer each set individually. If you mix them up it will take forever to sort them out again into the correct order!
I used a dark green cardstock for the matt layers for these.
All layered up, and the one has a piece of ribbon over one corner. It actually makes a nice way to add something a little extra, but was really there to cover a bit of the stamping that blurred a little!
I added some red acrylic jewels to the Holly berries, but if you want to keep them as flat as possible for posting, you could colour them with markers, or use Stickles or Pearls for this.
Next we move on to the Mistletoe ones, I used the same sentiments, this time in Silver ink and Detail Powder.
The stamping was done using Versafine Spanish Moss.
I didn't have any cardstock in a similar colour for the matts, so used some white pearl cardstock that I coloured the edges of with the Versafine to match.
It seemed like a good idea at the time! But I don't recommend using Versafine on Pearl cardstock.
It seems to take forever to dry, even with heat setting.
I'd inked the edges, and left overnight. It was a good 15-18 hours before I got back to them, but it was still wet. So I heat set, but that only improved it slightly.
I had originally tried Promarkers, but even though the colour was great, I couldn't get one even coat all the way round, and any overlaps left a darker area.
The Versafine did give me a problem with inky smudges, so i took to wiping my fingers with a baby wipe every time I handled one. Even though I couldn't see any ink on my fingers, there clearly was!
However, I did have a fix for getting rid of the smudges.
A while ago I mentioned Tombow Mono Sand erasers, as being recommended for removing stray specks of embossing powder that had been heat set. Which it works extremely well for, I might add. I've discovered it's also very good at removing ink.
Hopefully you can see the ink smudges on the bottom layer.
Here is what it looks like after I've used the eraser on it.
So that eraser is a really useful bit of kit to have in your arsenal. Available HERE on Amazon.
The 'open' Mistletoe is the Chocolate Baroque one, the 'closed' one is from Card-io, a set called Christmas Greenery.
I've added two sizes of half pearls for the Mistletoe berries on these.
Final set of cards uses a selection of Snowflake stamps, mainly from a Clarity set called Snowflakes, with the addition of some random tiny snowflake stamps to fill gaps.
Still using the same sentiments, and again silver heat embossed.
The snowflakes were stamped using Versafine Majestic Blue, and I added some WOW! Embossing powder in Arctic Blue, which just gives the snowflakes a little sparkle.
The Snowflake embellishment is a box of wooden snowflake embellishments from Kaisercraft, picked up at my local craft store. They were coated in Oxide Broken China, then clear embossing ink. Sprinkled with the Arctic Blue EP and heat set. I then added another layer of clear embossing ink, and a layer of clear UTEE, then finally another layer of the Arctic blue while the UTEE was still hot. You could replace the UTEE with a clear powder, just maybe using two coats. Don't do too many layers though, or you will lose the detail.
I stuck them to the front with a little Glossy Accents.
To keep them flat, you could either skip the embellishment, or die cut a snowflake or two from glitter card/paper.
The measurements for these cards are as follows: the card base is 4⅛x 5⅞. This was created by cutting an A4 sheet of card in half lengthways, which then gives you a 'landscape' card base, 2 from each sheet of card. The card base itself is the first matt layer.
So, your matt layers need to be:
4⅛ x 5⅞ ( card base)
3⅛ x 4⅞, and
2⅛ x 3⅞.
Your stamping layers are:
3⅞ x 5⅝
2⅞ x 4⅝ and
1⅞ x 3⅝.
It is better to use a thinner cardstock for your stamping layers than for the matt layers.
