Holiday Snowflake Cards

October is the month of the year where everything starts going frenetic and my anxiety usually kicks in a bit the further along the month gets. So I have absolutely no idea how I both started and finished making not one, not two, but fourteen holiday cards. I was taking an easy pace on these because I was experimenting the entire way. I had to kick it into overdrive though because I also needed to do a birthday card for my teen and an anniversary card for my hubby. And yes, I did finish those up the day before and the day of those events. In any case, here are the holiday cards I made. These won't be all of them, I have more planned. Why - I have no idea. We really don't know all that many people. I'm thinking of taking any extras I have over to an assisted living facility near us. Although I'm not certain if they're letting people in due to any pandemic restrictions they might have.

I started experimenting with snowflakes and backgrounds. I was inspired by a snowflake card done over on Cathy Zielske's channel as part of Simon Says Stamp's Stamptember event. Most, if not all, of the Stamptember products are only produced for this event and when they're out, they're out. Plus they only have them available as they are released a bit at a time, which means that if you want something, you have to order it day-by-day. The shipping costs alone would have killed me. Free shipping please, SSS! 

Anyway, the original snowflake by Gina K Designs was long gone by the time I looked at it a day later. The card design was simple enough that I wanted to try and figure out how I could do something with the products I had on hand. The snowflakes here are the Marie Snowflake die from Simon Says Stamp. I die cut them twice and only popped out the holes in the snowflakes on one of them. The problem is that some of the holes popped out of the snowflake that I intended to keep solid anyway. So I put them back in and put tape on the back to keep them there. This was WAY too much work but I was invested. 

I used distress inks on all of the detail snowflakes and a Nuvo Aqua Shimmer pen in Glitter Gloss for the solid snowflakes. Then I glued the detail flakes onto the solid ones. I actually forgot to use the Nuvo pen on some of them and honestly, you really couldn't tell the difference. So I stopped using it altogether on the rest. The snowflakes are just sitting there (below) on top of some experimental card panels. For the panel on the left, I used the Simon Says Stamp Filigree Snowflakes embossing folder and decided it was way too busy to be a background for the snowflake. So I embossed a snowflake stamp from the Snowflake Season stamp set by SSS randomly on a white card panel using clear embossing powder to see if it would look better. I didn't. I mean I liked the embossing, but didn't like it on white.

So I embossed a bunch of white front panels (14 of them) in that manner but used distress inks to colour the panels for the background. I used a few variations and really like them all. There are panels in Tumbled Glass, Speckled Egg, Broken China, Stormy Sky, Wilted Violet, and Cracked Pistachio.

 

The one below has Speckled Egg Distress Ink for the background over a clear emboss over the panel before it was inked. I also thought the snowflakes needed some framing so I used the solid portion of a Spellbinders Sparkling Mandala die to put behind the Marie die snowflake. The snowflake was coloured with a combination of Tumbled Glass Oxide Ink, Broken China Distress Ink, and Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink. I then popped it up using some foam tape. I used a sentiment from the Circle Sayings Holiday stamp set by Simon Says Stamp that says "Happy Christmas." Maybe it was all those years living over in England but I much prefer the "Happy" over the "Merry" for some reason. I also used clear sequins to put on top of the snowflake and some additional Marshmallow sequins to add around it.I also used clear sequins to put on top of the snowflake and some additional Marshmallow sequins to add around it.

 

The one below is the Eliza snowflake from Simon Says Stamp. The background is in Tumbled Glass Oxide Ink. I switched out the clear sequins on top of the snowflake with some Winter Mix sequins from Unity Stamps. The Winter Mix sequins are a bit holographic so they pick up and reflect colour. 

 

 

Below is the Eliza snowflake again but the background is Broken China Distress Ink. Back to the clear sequins. 

 

The next one below is the Marie snowflake with Broken China Distress Ink and clear sequins. My daughter did this one and used a heavier touch with the Broken China over just the snowflake areas on the background. It has a really nice look to it.

 

Below is the Marie snowflake again but with Stormy Sky Oxide Ink for the background and clear sequins. 

 

The last one below is the Marie snowflake again but with a combination of Wilted Violet Oxide Ink and Cracked Pistachio Oxide Ink for the background and the Winter Mix sequins on top of the snowflake. This card panel was actually the first one I did and was one big experiment. I didn't like the warping of the panel so I ran it through my laminator twice to flatten it out before I popped the snowflake on. Only I did this AFTER I embossed the snowflakes and added the distress colour. So what happened is that the laminator picked up the embossed snowflakes and on the second run through, deposited the snowflakes in a different position. So I have both the first embossing and also a secondary and much lighter embossing. You can't really tell from the photo but it's neat looking. I didn't want to ruin my laminator so this card was the first and only one that has the double embossing print.

 

Here's a view from the side to show the dimension.

 

For the inside of all cards, I used a sentiment from the Swell Christmas stamp set by Simon Says Stamp. I stamped it with a Cornflower blue ink cube by My Favorite Things. I also stamped some additional snowflakes around the sentiment from the Snowflake Season stamp set by SSS in Cement Gray by MFT.

 

Supplies:
Snowflake Season stamp set by Simon Says Stamp
Circle Sayings Holiday stamp set by Simon Says Stamp
Swell Christmas stamp set by Simon Says Stamp
Marie Snowflake die by Simon Says Stamp
Eliza Snowflake die by Simon Says Stamp
Sparkling Mandala cutting die by Spellbinders (SSS)
Tim Holtz Distress Oxides: Tumbled Glass, Mermaid Lagoon, Stormy Sky, Wilted Violet, Cracked Pistachio
Tim Holtz Distress Ink: Speckled Egg
My Favorite Things Ink Cubes: Cornflower and Cement Gray
Winter Mix sequins by Unity Stamps
Marshmallow sequins (unsourced)
Sparkling Clear Mix sequins (unsourced)
Nuvo Aqua Shimmer pen in Glitter Gloss
Detail Clear Embossing Powder by Stampendous (SSS)
VersaMark watermark stamp pad (SSS)
Inkadinkado Embossing Magic Powder Bag (SSS)
Embossing Heat Tool (SSS)
Craft Tacky Glue by Simon Says Stamp
miscellaneous cardstock and foam tape