Christmas in July Light-Up Box Pops Card

Hello again friends!

I am so excited to share with you the Christmas in July Light-Up Box Pops Card that I created today! I played with i-crafter's Box Pops, Holiday Truck Add-On die set and decided that I wanted to do something a little different by lighting it up with EZ-Lights.

I started by die cutting white shimmery cardstock using the Box Pops, Oval Base twice. Once cut, I placed one piece into my MISTI 2.0 and covered it with my Fern Berries stencil. I used Catherine Pooler Cranberry Fizz ink and ink blended it onto the base front and bottom sections of my Oval Base using my red i-Brush Blender Brush. I love these brushes, especially for fine, detailed stencils like this one. Next, I stamped the "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" sentiment from the Christmas Sentiments stamp set to one of the halves, making it my front half.

Next, I cut out the pieces for my truck and trees from the Holiday Truck Add-On set. For my truck, I used a black base and then used a thin shiny paper (almost wrapping paper in thinness that I picked up secondhand) for the bumpers and tire hub caps. The tree that I wanted to light up, I backed with vellum that I colored with Copics because we like colored lights in our house!

 

I glued my colored vellum to the back of one of the three green Christmas trees that I had cut out. I added some Narrow Double Thick Foam Tape to the back of this tree to trap my light in when I built my card.

I was a bit silly and did the next steps in the wrong order, in order to avoid confusion I am going to tell you what I should have done rather than what I did. I should have creased all of the fold lines on my Oval Base pieces using my i-Press, then glued the individual pieces together so that I had my two halves of the base. I should have added the little stand piece that would eventually hold the two front trees that I hid my EZ-Lights base/switch piece in. 

Next, I should have glued my Holiday Truck die cut to the front half of my base and punch hole in the bottom so that I could weave my lights through. I had already punched a hole in the tree on top of the truck. I got snow happy and used a Snow Marker too early so ignore that for now, I promise to come back to it!

I slid my three LED lights from my EZ-Lights through the front slit, then pulled them through the hole punched in the bottom back and back to the front through the hole punched in the tree. Most of my wires hid in the bottom half of the card. 

I cut out two extra trees from the truck outline and simply cut them off the truck. I tested to see where to position them in order to allow me to hide the battery holder/switch on them. Once my wires were threaded, I mounted the battery holder to my tree backs using glue dots. Then I glued the two halves of the base together.

I then backed the two additional trees that I had cut out previously with more green cardstock since I didn't want to add lights to these. Once I had built them, I glued them together and used more Narrow Double Thick Foam Tape to adhere them to the two black glued together trees and the battery holder/switch.

I positioned my EZ-Lights LEDs to the tree on the truck using glue dots. I covered this with my original tree backed with colored vellum. 

This is when I should have broke out my Snow Marker and went snow happy. I hit the base, several parts of the truck and even the trees with my Snow Marker. There were sections that I added snow to after the fact, I had to be super careful so that my EZ-Lights didn't get affected or melted.

Now, the only downfall to this card is that because of how close to the base I put the EZ-Light battery/switch the card does not fold up, so it's more of a home decor piece than it is a card. Otherwise, I am completely obsessed with how this card came out and was pleasantly surprised with how few hick-ups I had creating it, even with doing several things out of order so to speak!

You can see here that I used black foam adhesive squares to bump the tires out from the truck body.

This side angle shows how much Snow Marker I really did use (I'm obsessed). It does mask the white of the foam tape nicely as well.

To add a frosted look to the truck windows, I added a small vellum piece to the back side of the truck.

Here she is all lit up! I like to take these pictures in the dark to really show how well the lights shine.

Here is a short clip of the card lit up in the light and in the dark!

I hope that you’ve enjoyed my cards and that you feel inspired to go create! Be sure to join the i-crafter Facebook Fan Club! We love seeing all of your creations using the i-crafter products so don’t forget to tag us or use #icrafter when you share!

Until next time,

Rachel

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Thank you so much for stopping by today!

How about Hanukkah in July?

Hello again!

Today I am showing off the new i-crafter Holiday Words dies paired with the i-crafter Snowflake Border die set on two cards.

I wanted to my cards today to have a Hanukkah theme rather than Christmas. There are plenty of other holidays celebrated in December that we can begin to prepare a card stash for now, plus I happen to know some amazing folks who celebrate Hanukkah, I will be sending these cards to them!

To start my first card, I began by cutting some Erin Lee Creative Holographic Cardstock down to 4"x 5.25" & then die cut my "Happy Holidays" out of the center. I angled the dies slightly to add a touch of whimsy. For this card, I used the negative space created by cutting out the words, I set my words to the side to use in my second card. I trimmed some blue scrapbook paper down to fit on my card base, leaving it slightly larger than the Holographic Cardstock so there would be a nice layered look when I finished.

Next, I backed the Holographic Cardstock with foam tape to add some dimension to the card. Once this was placed, I used the center bits of the words to fill some of the negative space and make it easier to read.

I die cut snowflakes using a blue glitter cardstock. The snowflakes are a mix of the extra dies in both the Holiday Words and the Snowflake Border die sets, along with the smallest 3 snowflakes being negatives from the border die itself.

My second card also pairs the i-crafter Holiday Words and Snowflake Border die sets. I chose a 5.5"x5.5" white card base for this project. I die cut the snowflakes from each die set using Holographic Cardstock to match the words that had been set aside from the first card.

Next, I took the same blue glitter cardstock as I used in my first card and cut it down to 5.5"x5.5". I should have laid my words down and made sure that I was happy with the fit first, instead I eyeballed it and as a result my words are closer together than I would have liked and "Holidays" dips into the snowflake border a bit.

A "pro tip" when using the Snowflake Border, this die is so intricate that some of the pieces take a extra passes through the machine or even a precision cutting plate if you have on, which I don't instead I run it through twice with the die facing sideways, then another two times with the die facing up and down.

I glued everything together flat with no foam tape and no extra embellishments other than the snowflakes that I had die cut. Even with the "imperfections" in these cards, they are absolutely gorgeous and I am so excited to send them this Winter!

I hope that you’ve enjoyed my cards and that you feel inspired to go create! Be sure to join the i-crafter Facebook Fan Club, then follow us on Instagram, and Pinterest too! We love seeing all of your creations using the i-crafter products so don’t forget to tag us or use #icrafter when you share!

Until next time,

R. Winn

Christmas in July with i-crafter

It's Christmas in July time for i-crafter! Today I am sharing a home decor piece that I created using the new Folded Holly die set. I started with an 8"x10" canvas that I coated in Modge Podge and liquid adhesive. 

Next, I ripped up scraps of cool blue toned scrapbook paper then pasted them onto my canvas. I love the results, it looks like a scrapbook paper quilt to me. I covered the entire thing with a clear glossy sealant. 

For the Folded Holly, I die cut 3 holly leaves from a rich green cardstock. I used the i-Press to crease my leaves. The trick with these was folding the two sides together. Once I got them together and adhered them, I used the i-Grip tweezers to hold the sides together while the glue dried.

I used scraps from a dark glittery red cardstock for the larger circle of the berries, a bright red cardstock, and white scraps for the little white dots. In order to add a bit of dimension I used the round circle end of the i-Press to burnish the backs of the berries so they're a little bumped out. I added a fourth red circle behind the 3 main circles.

I wanted to add a little something to the bottom of the canvas so I used "Merry Christmas" word dies from the new Christmas Words set to cut two sets out, one from black cardstock and another from the bright red cardstock of the berries.

Home decor isn't my typical project style but I had SO much fun making this canvas! 

Head over to i-crafter to get the Folded Holly and Christmas Words sets and check out the other Christmas in July new release items too! Be sure to join the i-crafter Facebook Fan Club, then follow us on Instagram, and Pinterest too! We love seeing all of your creations using the i-crafter products.

Until next time,

R. Winn

Nuts About You

Hello again friends! I'm back with the newest Kindred Stamps release! Today, I have 3 cards using "Nuts About You" which will be available on Friday, July 26th at 8am PST/11am EST.  This 3"x4" set features two adorable chipmunks, and some punny sentiments that make me happy!

I used Ink On 3's Fade-Out ink with my MISTI to stamp out two pairs of these little dudes. Then I colored them with Prismacolor Colored Pencils. I am absolutely smitten with how they turned out.

My first card features the sentiment "I'm nuts about you". I picked one of my little guys and built the card around him. First, I went ahead and heat embossed a strip of acorns on pink cardstock using Brutus Monroe Sand Castle powder. This was cut down to a thin strip and layered it onto a piece of Stampin Up Crumb Cake cardstock for my card base. On the base, I heat embossed a little "Aww" using a Lindy's Gang pink powder, below where I wanted to put my chipmunk.

 I used the new Kindred Stamps Sunshine Glitter Gloss on white cardstock over the Kindred Stamps Hearts and Dots Stencil to create a textured patterned paper. I cut out pieces of this using a set of The Stamps of Life heart dies after it had dried. I layered these around the card using foam tape and Therm O Web Ultra Bond glue. 

To finish this card up, I layered the base onto a bright yellow cardstock that matches that Sunshine Glitter Gloss to form my card, I really like using colored cardstock for cards, I feel like it's a nice change from the typical white. For my sentiment, I heat embossed "I'm nuts about you" in the same Sand Castle embossing powder on the same pink cardstock as I had done the acorns. I layered that onto a piece of the yellow cardstock after die cutting them both to create a little layered banner. Finally, I placed the chipmunk in the midst of it all for him to shine.

My next card didn't turn out exactly how I had hoped. I wanted to create an alcohol ink background and use Ink Lift to pull up acorns in the background. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert with alcohol inks and ended up layering it too thick for this to work well! So, instead, I cut my background down into three smaller squares. I layered these onto a piece of Echo Park's Fall paper pad. I arranged the squares over a strip of gold glitter cardstock so it just barely peeks through with a bit of shine. 

Next, I used Alcohol Lift-Ink to pull up acorns and then stamped them onto white cardstock. I created a little stack of them creating a background. These look faint in the photo, but in person, they look great! I put all of this onto another piece of the same Echo Park paper, I just flipped it over so the other side's pattern showed instead of the cool blue.

 I love the buildable sentiments in this set, they are fun, and a bit punny, which is completely my sense of humor! "Sorry for driving you nuts" was my pick for this card, I stamped it onto a banner from an old card kit. Last, I put my little guy on a piece of brown scrap and trimmed around him to create a border, I placed him off to the side a bit so you could still see the acorn stack. 

My last card, is my favorite! I wanted to work in the Christmas in July concept. I used both chipmunks for this card. I started by stamping a tree from an old Stampin' Up set in Catherine Pooler Sage ink on to a piece of patterned paper from Echo Park. I added a few rhinestones to the tree for decorations, some I left clear, some I colored using a blue Sharpie, I feel like they look like little crystal ornaments. I used a Uchida Snow Marker to create a thin layer of snow on the ground below the tree.

I placed a chipmunk on either side of the tree, added some adorable Santa hat stickers from Michael's, and then the Candy Cane die set from The Stamp Doctor to place a candy cane in each of their hands.

Next, I stamped the family sentiment onto a tag from an old card kit using Catherine Pooler Samba ink. I strung the tag onto a sliver ribbon, and added a few large glue dots to the back of the tag to hold it in place. I wanted to add "Merry Christmas" to the card so I used The Stamp Doctor's new Tiny Alphabet dies to cut the letters from a piece of glitter cardstock that I ink blended Samba onto and arranged them on the other side of the tree.

My final touch was a layer of Wink of Stella clear onto the snow to add a bit of sparkle to the card! The card turned out better than I had originally imagined it, which doesn't happen often for me.

Now, be sure to leave a comment including your email address, I'd love to know which card is your favorite! I will be drawing a name from everyone who comments, the winner will get a $10 Kindred Stamps store credit. Make sure you check our entire team's blogs because they each are going to give away $10 store credits too!

The entire Kindred Stamps July release will be available Friday, July 26th at 8am PST/11am EST. Be sure to subscribe to the Kindred Stamps blog to see a daily line up of sneak peeks from our amazing Design Team and see the full product release on Friday! Come join the Fan Club and release event to be part of the release fun, and you may just win some Kindred Stamps credit!!

Thank you so much for visiting me today, I will see you again soon!

~R. Winn