Ribbon Art

September is a special month at Stampin' Up!  For the whole month, with each purchase of $50 (not including shipping or taxes) you get a spool of that gorgeous stitched satin ribbon which was designed especially to compliment the brand new In-Colours.  That's a colossal saving!  The ribbon normally sells for $12.25 per spool of 10 yards.  So obviously I had to design something to showcase our wonderful Stampin' Up! ribbon.

Thanks to Dawn Olchefske and her wonderful Holiday Collection Framelits Ribbon Card, I decided to borrow her design but instead, use the Holiday Ornament Framelits for my card.  This will definitely be the make n take at my Open House this month!

To get started I had to decide on which ribbon to use.  I'm not always a big ribbon user so I don't have the endless ribbon supplies that some demos appear to have on hand.  The ones that really said Christmas to me were the three 1/2" Scallop Dots Ribbon that I have in Chocolate Chip, Cherry Cobbler and Old Olive.  That also gave me three of the colours for my cardstock.  Halfway there.  I wanted to put stripes on my ornaments so after checking through my ribbon supplies again, I decided that the one new In-Colour that I happen to have, the Summer Starfruit ribbon, complimented the other colours perfectly.  I also saw that I had some 1/4" Whisper White Stitched Grosgrain ribbon.  That, I decided, would be perfect for the top of the three ornaments.

For the cardstock that I planned to cut the three framelit shapes into I didn't want to use one of the cardstock colours that matched the ribbon.  It had to contrast yet compliment the other colours in the card.  What could be better, I thought, than the very neutral Crumbcake cardstock?  So I was good to go.

My first step was to cut my cardstock pieces.  The base would be Cherry Cobbler so that was an easy 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" folded in half to 4 1/4" x 5 1/2".  My next layer would be the Old Olive and I cut that to 5 1/4" x 4".  Next would be the Chocolate Chip and I cut that to 3 7/8" x 5 1/8".  The final layer would be the Crumbcake and I cut that to 3 3/4" x 5".

I had chosen my three framelits and proceeded to line them up on the Crumbcake and cut the shapes out using my Big Shot.

Then I centred the Crumbcake cardstock on the Chocolate Chip layer and traced the cut out shapes onto the Chocolate Chip with a pencil.

I covered the traced images with snail because the new jumbo sticky rounds that I had ordered from the Holiday Catalogue hadn't arrived yet.  The whole piece of cardstock can be covered with snail or sticky rounds as long as the border which will show outside the Crumbcake, once that is mounted, remains clear.  The easiest way to stick on the ribbon is to put it in place on the image, allowing some to overlap on each side, and then cut the ribbon.  It can also be precut.  Really, it works perfectly well either way.  I chose to alternate colours, making stripes.  The one constant was the Summer Starfruit ribbon which I used on each ornament.  I assigned a different colour of Scallop Dots ribbon to each ornament.

It doesn't look very pretty here but it gets better.

The next step is to put dimensionals all over the Crumbcake cardstock.  The dimensionals will be holding the cardstock in place, allowing the ribbon ornaments to show through, so it's important to be generous with the dimensionals.  This is how I placed them.

And this is how it looks when the Crumbcake layer is placed on top of the Chocolate Chip and ribbon layer.

Now that looks pretty, but we're not finished yet.  I thought it would look better to have the ornaments hanging from something and so decided to use some white Baker's Twine.  I anchored the twine to the back of the Chocolate Chip cardstock with snail and then looped it around the 3/16" Gold Brad which I pushed through the top of each ornament.

This was then adhered to the Olive Green cardstock with more snail.

And then adhered to the front of the Cherry Cobbler base card with more snail.

I decided to add the Christmas sentiment from the Word Play stamp set, coloured in the centre of the stamped ornament with Summer Starfruit and the top and bottom of the stamped ornament with the Cherry Cobbler Dazzling Effects.

I love this card!  Thank you, Dawn Olchefske for the inspiration and thank you, Stampin' Up! for the free ribbon offer this month.  I plan to get some of each of the new In-Colors and see what else I can create.