Stampers Anonymous

A cold winter’s night looking out from a window safe and warm onto a sleepy village is the scene this card suggests with hints of happy Christmas memories and the main reason for looking forward to Christmas eve.

The card is a happy mix of papercrafting products from both the USA and UK. The decorative papers and Bethlehem stamps are from Hunkydory. (Christmas papers from Hunkydory sell-out quickly, so I purchase them when I first see them generally on Craftstash as they have the best shipping rates from the UK to the USA.) The window frame is a cut and embossing folder from Memory Box. (I fussy cut two of these window frames and glued together for stability. After cutting out the basic window opening from the patterned paper.) My village is made from the hero Arts Tri-fold Edge Village dies and colored with watercolor pencils. At the top of the window is a wreath cut from thick packaging cardboard using an older Lawn Fawn mini wreath die set. The village and patterned paper are layered with foam tape.

For sentiments on this card I heat embossed “Silent Night” from the Bethlehem stamp set onto vellum using my favorite gold embossing powder. Inside the card is a Christmas tree shaped sentiment by Tim Holtz from Stampers Anonymous. The card back features the Bethlehem stamp in Crumb Cake ink that is similar to gold.

The envelope flap is stamped with one of my favorite round Christmas stamps from the Love Cardmaking magazine in a dark green ink mimicking the wreath on the card.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this blog post, please like it and follow the blog. 😊

Dies & Embossing Folder:

Hero Arts – Fancy Dies – D1787 Tri-fold Edge Village Fancy Edge
Memory Box – Open Studio – 3D Embossing Folder -EF12 Domed Window Emboss and Cut
Lawn Fawn – Lawn Cuts – LF1496 Mini Wreath

Stamps, Ink, Embossing Powder

Hunkydory – For the Love of Stamps – Little Town of Bethlehem – Club-FTLS26B
Stampers Anonymous – Tim Holtz Collection – Doodle Greetings 2
Sweet Sentiments Set from Love Cardmaking, issue 9 November 2018
Stampin’ Up – Classic Stampin’ Pad – Tranquil Tide and Crumb Cake
Gold embossing powder from June 2020 Papercraft Society kit
VersaMark – Watermark Stamp Pad

Papers

Park Lane A7 card base and envelope
Hunkydory – Duo Designs Paper Pad 8×8 – All Wrapped up & Festive Foil
Hunkydory – Adorable Scorable pattern Pack – Snowflakes Splendour
White card stock
Clear vellum

Additional Supplies:

Nuvo Watercolour Pencils
Waterbrush
Foam tape

“May the bounty of the season fill your heart and home” is the message of this layered Thanksgiving card. It uses the October 2020 Large Die of the Month by Spellbinders as well as a variety of other brands’ elements to make a 6 ½ x 5 inches card with matching envelope.

I started by using an older Tim Holtz brick stencil with his fired brick Distress Ink on a 6 x 4 ½ inches brick red cardstock. I went through my paper scrap bins for the paper that I cut the rest of the scene’s elements, much of it coming from junk mail advertisements and envelopes. The brass letter slot and doorknob where from a candy box.

The window was cut twice from white and black cardstock and pieced together. All the white elements were cut from shiny coated packaging. Several years ago, I employed a tiny Fiskars oak leaf punch to cut the colorful leaves from junk mail. The leaves were used to make the door wreath which uses the wreath from the die set as a base. The welcome mat is cut from a brown craft paper.

By laying out the doorway pieces on the stenciled red panel I knew where to glue the bottom step piece and then the left column, red door and right column followed by the top piece. (I recommend watching the assembly video to understand how the pieces all go together.) A sticky tip tool is especially useful in assembling this doorway scene’s tiny pieces.

After the glue on the front panel was dry, I took a soft glue eraser to the white sections to erase the glue smudges.

I stamped the inside sentiment using paper masks (from sticky note paper) to allow only the intended sections to be stamped using three colors. The order of stamping was light to darkest ink – orange, green, brown. I placed a fussy-cut mask of the pumpkin after the orange layer was stamped which is hard to see in the photos showing what I masked for each stamping layer. Before I stamped the sentiment stamp in brown, I removed the pumpkin vine stamp from the stamping platform.