SSS DieCember Blog Hop

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog! I am so happy to take part in the blog hop to celebrate DieCember® and the release of the Simon Says Stamp DieCember collection of dies. If you follow along the hop, you should have arrived here from Lisa Addesa and I am sure she shared clever card ideas with you.

The DieCember release is full of fantastic new dies, and there are so many of them too - 33 if I counted correctly. There are also lovely glitter papers and envelopes. You can see the whole collection here.

I can hardly believe that December is already here. Yesterday, we visited a really nice Christmas market at an old castle and ate way too many 'burnt almonds' - I am not sure about the translation, perhaps 'candied almonds' is better.

I have two project to share with you today and they are pretty different from each other. One is a mixed-media Christmas wall-hanger, and the second one is a winter scene card. All the techniques can be used for other types of projects, and not necessarily for Christmas or winter. To challenge myself I used only dies, and only one single stamp (a small sentiment).

Let's start with the mixed-media canvas, for which I decided to use non-traditional Christmas colors. You can use dies for so many different things, and here I used them mainly to create a textured background. You can do this with almost any type of die, and it also works great with border dies, which is what I used here. It is easy to think of border dies only as borders, but they work great for other things too.

Start with a piece of watercolor paper (6 x 7 in) and die cut the Moon and Star Border, Retro Flake Border and Swirling Star Trail from the paper. You can place them in different ways and it would also look great to use one border die over the entire paper. I left the snowflakes in the paper, for some variation. Keep the left-over stars for the next project.

Cut a piece of mat board to the same size and glue the watercolor paper to the mat board using matte medium. I really like the Swirling Star Trail die.

Cover with a layer of gesso.

When the gesso is dry, paint with Distress Paints in three broad strokes of color. Mist with water and dab some of the paint off, to create texture. I almost didn't want to cover anything of this up.

Rub silver metallic Distress Crayon into the die cut areas and wipe off the rest of the crayon with a moist cloth. This also gives a faint glitter effect to the whole piece.

Splatter with white paint, for texture and to give it a snowy look.

I painted a layer of white over the dice letters and the wood slices.

Die cut snowflakes with the Retro Flake Border from SSS White Diamond Glimmer cardstock and glue here and there. I love the look of these snowflakes. I also doodled some white lines around the panel with a gel pen. Here you can see the nighttime snowy effect of the background.

The two ladies from Tim Holtz's Christmas Paper Dolls were colored with Distress Markers. I also die cut a tag from patterned paper, which was layered underneath them together with a piece of fabric that I found on my desk.

The edges of the tag were distressed. I also had a Clipping Heart die cut on my desk and added it to the panel.

Paint was rubbed into the word band. In the background you can see the nice effect of the snowflakes that were left in the paper.

Joy is one of my favorite words.

You can add rubons to the wood slices. I also added a couple of red and white heirloom roses.

I also added some rub-on words and metallic stars.

Here's another look at the silver effect on the background.

And now to the card.

You might already know that I love to build little scenes on my cards and projects and the very cute Picture Book Hugging Penguin is perfect for a winter scene. I also used a die to make a mask for my background. One of my favourite things with dies, is that you can also use them to make masks and stencils, making them even more versatile.The penguin also looks good holding a little heart or a star, but I wanted mine to more natural looking here.

Die cut the Sun and Moon Collage from SSS Masking paper. Cut off the lower edge.

To decrease the stickiness of the masking paper, place it on your pants or something similar a couple of times. Otherwise it might stick a little too hard to the glossy cardstock. I used glossy cardstock because I love how vibrant dye inks look on glossy cardstock, but you can also do this technique on other types of cardstock. Use a torn piece of masking tape as a base for the snow, again making it less sticky first. Ink with the lightest shade of ink first. I often use a Colorbox Stylus Tool with an oval tip when I ink scenic stamping pieces. It gives great precision. But you can use any type of inking tool.

Continue adding darker and darker shades of ink until you are happy with the look.

Use additional torn pieces of masking paper, or printer paper to create snowy hills. I made it darker at the front and lighter the further into the scene one comes.

Carefully remove the mask (or you can leave it a little longer for the next step too). I later cut along the white lines.

Mist the paper quite heavily with drops of water. Dab the water off with a piece of paper towel. This creates a really nice snowy effect.

When dry, add more stars / snow with a white gel pen. Then use a Q-tip and white pigment ink to add mist and shine around the moon and around some of the stars. Dab some of the ink off on a paper first, since it is better to add just a little at a time.

To add another texture to my card, which would look nice next to the glossy paper, I die cut the Picture Book Hugging Penguin from wool felt. To make it easier to assemble the picture book dies, I often press the die into a piece of paper and cut with a pair of scissors just inside the indentation. You can also trace with a pencil. This piece is a great base to build the rest of the figure on. You can see my Christmas Notebook for another example.

Use the left-over stars from the first project - from both the Moon and Star Border and the Swirling Star Trail - and glue them here and there on the background. You could also die cut new stars from the White Diamond Glimmery Cardstock, which would also look really great.

The combination of splattered water, gel pen dots and the die cut stars gives a cool textured look to the sky. Die cut a the You're a Star sentiment from black cardstock.

The penguins are so adorable. I love them. You can also combine them with the Happy Penguin and the Secret Penguin. The sentiment is part rub-on, part stamp.

I hope you will jump along on the hop and of course there are prizes to be won too. At every stop of the hop one random person who gives a comment will win a $25 gift voucher to Simon Says Stamp. The winners will be written on the Simon Says Stamp Store Blog on Wednesday.

Your next stop on the hop is Gayatri Murali, and you don't want to miss the inspiration she will share with you. There was also a DieCember blog hop yesterday, so check that out too, for even more inspiration.

These are the stops along today's hop, in case you get lost:

Simon Says Stamp Blog 

Laura Bassen

Nichol Spohr

Nina-Marie Trapani

Amy Rysavy

Heather Ruwe

Kelly Latevola

Suzy Plantamura

Lisa Addesa

Anna-Karin Evaldsson (you are here)

Gayatri Murali

Virginia Lu

Lorraine Aquilina

Thank you so much for stopping by here today!!

Happy die cutting!!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

Simon Says Stamp PICTURE BOOK HUGGING PENGUIN [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp SUN AND MOON COLLAGE [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp MOON AND STAR BORDER [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp SWIRLING STAR TRAIL [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp RETRO FLAKE BORDER [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp YOU'RE A STAR [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp CLIPPING HEART [ SSS ] Simon Says Clear Stamps STAINED GLASS GREETINGS [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp Cardstock GLIMMERY WHITE DIAMOND [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp MASKING PAPER [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp Wool Felt Sheets NIGHT SKY [ SSS ] Simon Says Stamp Wool Felt [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology CHRISTMAS PAPER DOLLS [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology WOOD SLICES [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology FLUTED STARS [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology HEIRLOOM ROSES HALLOWEEN [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology HEIRLOOM ROSES [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology 8 x 8 Mini Paper Stash CHRISTMAS [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology CHRISTMAS Word Bands [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology CHRISTMAS Remnant Rubs [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology RED ALPHA DICE Findings [ SSS ] Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Crayon BRUSHED PEWTER [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Sizzix Die TAG & BOOKPLATES [ SSS ] Tim Holtz 8.5 X 11 DISTRESS WATERCOLOR CARDSTOCK [ SSS ] Ranger Inkssentials GLOSS PAPER 8.5 X 11 [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad MERMAID LAGOON [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad PEACOCK FEATHERS [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad TUMBLED GLASS [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad BLACK SOOT [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad BLUEPRINT SKETCH [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad GROUND ESPRESSO [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad SALTY OCEAN [ SSS ] Clearsnap Colorbox FROST WHITE INK PAD [ SSS ] Sakura WHITE MEDIUM POINT Gelly Roll Classic [ SSS ] Clearsnap Colorbox STYLUS HANDLES 3 [ SSS ] Clearsnap Colorbox OVAL BLENDER STYLUS TIPS 3 [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Collage Medium MATTE [ SSS ] Sizzix BIG SHOT MACHINE [ SSS ] Sizzix MULTIPURPOSE PLATFORM STANDARD FOR WAFER THIN DIES [ SSS ] Sizzix PURPLE WITH SILVER GLITTER [ SSS ] Sizzix PRECISION BASE PLATE For Wafer Thin Dies [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Tonic Craft MINI SNIPS [ SSS ] Tim Holtz DISTRESS SPRAYER [ SSS ] Ranger MINI ROUND INK BLENDING TOOLS [ SSS ] We R Memory Keepers CROP-A-DILE [ SSS ] We R Memory Keepers COOL METAL [ SSS ] 3M Scotch PINK ATG ADVANCED TAPE GLIDER [ SSS ] 3M Scotch ATG 0.25 Inch GOLD REFILL TAPE [ SSS ] Ranger Inkssentials Non Stick CRAFT SHEET [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology SANDING GRIP [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Idea-ology SANDING GRIP REFILL [ SSS ] We R Memory Keepers Cropadile CORNER CHOMPER [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress COLLAGE BRUSH SET [ SSS ] Dina Wakley Ranger WHITE GESSO [ SSS ] Sizzix LITTLE SIZZLES MAT BOARD PACK [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Flip Top Distress Paint WILTED VIOLET [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Flip Top Distress Paint DUSTY CONCORD [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Paint PICKET FENCE [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Flip Top Distress Paint PICKED RASPBERRY [ SSS ] Dina Wakley Ranger WHITE [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress SPLATTER BRUSH [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Markers WORN LIPSTICK [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Markers WILTED VIOLET [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Markers GROUND ESPRESSO [ SSS ] Tim Holtz Distress Markers SPUN SUGAR [ SSS ]

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