Christmas Wishes --- A Mixture of Retired and New

I love the new products in our Holiday Catalogue but I'm also nostalgic for some of the great products that have retired from Stampin' Up!  The card which I've made is entirely Stampin' Up! but it's a mixture of the retired and the current.  Come with me and take a nostalgic look back at some of my favourtie things.

To prepare my card, I used a base of Old Olive cardstock and then had three different strips of cardstock or Designer Paper for my next layer.  From the top down I used Early Espresso which I first embossed using my Woodgrain embossing folder.  The middle strip is a lovely "knit-look" design from the Trim the Tree Designer Series Paper Stack.  The bottom strip is the sparkly Champagne Glimmer Paper.  Dividing the Glimmer Paper and the designer paper is a narrow strip of Cherry Cobbler which I cut using my Finishing Touches Edgelit.  I also added a piece of Early Espresso Seam Binding approximately half an inch above that. The long, tilted banner is cut from Sahara Sand and embossed using my Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder.

If you haven't guess already, I'm designing this card for a couple of challenges.  The sketch is from the Paper Craft Crew Challenges:

For the next layer above the banner, I wanted to have a sled.  I found one but it was a stamp and not as large as I desired and so I made my own.  First of all I took a piece of Cherry Cobbler cardstock and stamped it with Cherry Cobbler ink using my Hardwood stamp.  Then I cut it out, using the lines within the Hardwood stamp for convenience.  I had sufficient stamped cardstock to cut a couple of cross-pieces for the sled and I think it looks pretty good, considering I didn't have a pattern.  I mounted the "sled" over the slanted banner using Dimensionals after sponging around it with Cherry Cobbler ink and adding a "rope" to the front of the sled.  That rope is actually a piece of Baked Brown Sugar Thick Baker's Twine.  

Instead of that little square at the bottom right of the design, I chose to stamp and fussy-cut the skates from the retired Winter Memories stamp set.  Before adding them to the bottom right of the sled using Dimensionals, I coloured the holly and berries using my Blendabilities and the blades using my Silver Stampin' Dazzle Marker.  I also carefully covered the holly and berries and blades with a layer of Crystal Effects.  

I wanted mittens for the small embellishments that sit diagonally across from each other on the sled.  The only current mittens that I have are the tiny ones from the Project Life Holiday Cheer stamp set so I went back to my retired stamps.  The Make a Mitten stamp set was perfect but I still wound up fussy-cutting them because I didn't want the white margin around them.  (What is it with me and fussy-cutting?)   I used Old Olive ink to stamp the mittens and then coloured in the white very carefully with my Blendabilities.  Finally I mounted them onto the card using Dimensionals.

So I'm in the home stretch with this card.   You can see from the sketch that I need a banner with a sentiment and some embellishments in the top left corner.  I didn't want the banner to take over the card.  There is so much detail and I prefer that it shows through and so I reached for my Vellum and heat embossed it with Gold embossing powder.  I used the sentiment from the Ornamental Pine stamp set.  So that the adhesive wouldn't show through the semi-transparent vellum, I carefully traced some Crystal Effects along several of the letters from the reverse of the vellum and then used that to adhere the banner to the card.

I chose the embellishments carefully.  I want to enter this card into the SUO Challenges which are calling for one or several embellishments from pages 208 or 209 of the 2014-2015 Annual Catalogue.  And so I chose three little Baked Brown Sugar star sequins (the colour is incredibly close to the colour of the Champagne Glimmer paper) and then set an Early Espresso Candy Dot into the centre of each star.

And that's my card.  It was a long road getting there, but it's finished.  I love the way the new products enhance the retired ones.  

For more cards using this sketch, please check out the Paper Craft Crew Challenges.

For more cards using Stampin' Up! embellishments, check out the SUO Challenges.

And finally, for more Christmas cards, check out the Christmas Card Challenge.