Christmas Countdown: Card Party

A few times a year I host a little card-making party/card class with some co-workers and friends. I always do one for the holiday season and my next one is coming up fast! Next week in fact. I've started putting together the card kits for the class and thought I would share the designs I'm doing for this year.

This is a technique that I've shown before - the masked glitter background, but I thought it might be worth repeating as the possibilities with this technique are quite exhaustive.

I went to my LSS today to pick up a very specific item - large chipboard snowflakes. Darned if I could find them but I'm glad I asked the ladies there because they suggested that I use the diecutting machine and make my own. Well, I guess I've been living in the dark, because in all the years I've been papercrafting, I've never used the big Ellison diecut machines in the LSS. In any case, I bought a bunch of grungeboard (if you've never seen this stuff -check it out - very cool) and cut myself a bunch of nice snowflakes. I was very impressed.

The grungeboard has subtle patterns embossed into it so its pretty fun stuff. You can ink this up with your stamp pad or paint it as I did to give it some colour. Colour it to match your project - its quite versatile that way. I'm using Adirondak dauber painters. Once you've painted them, leave them to dry while you work on the rest of the card.

For the glitter masking you will need a piece of cardstock about 2.75 x 5.5 inches and some double sided adhesive tape to cover it. This is scor-tape. You can purchase it from the Scor-pal online store. Put the tape onto your cardstock and press it down. Leave the cover on for now.

Cut out your mask images from another piece of tape cover using punches or die cuts. I'm using a variety of snowflake punches and small circles from my hole punch. Its important to use the tape cover for this step so they don't stick to your tape.

Peel off the tape cover and lay down your design using your cut out shapes. DO NOT TOUCH THE TAPE with your fingers!!! If you do, the oils from your hands will make it not so sticky. Use tweezers or other tools to place your images. You do not need to press them down - just lightly place them on the tape background.

Lay down your first layer of glitter. This will be your background colour. I'm using silver Glitter Ritz glitter. Once you have your background colour down, brush off the loose glitter using a makeup brush and pour back into the jar. Then peel off the next layer of images to put down your second colour.

I'm using Gunmetal Glitter Ritz glitter to create a shadow effect behind my snowflakes (which will be the foreground colour). This is quite subtle but adds a bit of dimension to your background. Brush off excess as above and peel off your final layer of images.

The last layer I put down was white Glitter Ritz glitter. Here is how the final background looks once the excess glitter has been brushed away. Be sure to burnish your glitter by rubbing your finger over the entire surface. That will really make it shine.

Make yourself a base card of 8.5x5.5" cardstock folded in half. Trim your glittered background to 2.5" and add a navy or dark blue cardstock mat to it (3x5.5"). Glue to the card front. Use glue dots to attach your large snowflake and then use a pop dot or foam square to attach another snowflake on top. I added a few spots of glitter to my large snowflake with a glue pen and then a clear rhinestone to the centre of the small snowflake. Add a sentiment and you're done!

Supplies: Cardstock (Bazzil - swiss dot white, SU! - nearly navy), Grungeboard (snowflakes), glitter (Glitter Ritz), stamps (Sunshine Designs), punches, double sided adhesive (Scor-tape), paint (Adirondak), Ink (Adirondak).