...Nutcracker Sweet!

Good morning!! (well it was when I started writing lol!)

We're launching 5 new clear Photopolymer stamp sets here on Sunday! There will be samples between now and then on all the DT blogs, you know Christmas is on the way...you can feel it in the air...LOl, don't miss the inspiration over the next few days! On Sunday the sets will be revealed at 7pm my time, there will be a DT Blog waltz and maybe a prize or two?...you won't know if you don't pop in to check us out!

Before we start did you see the ladies!!??? Wowness!! get on over to the DT blogs if you haven't!
Lisa, Julia, Mona, Carly, Jennifer, Bonnie, Lynn, Anya, Belinda, Laurie

So now, I'd like to introduce you to St Nicholas! He is one of the two nutcrackers featuring in our new set Nutcracker Sweet. Scroll down to see the other guy, the Nutcracker Prince.

Years ago I went to Salzburg to see the Christmas Markets, I already had a predilection for nutcrackers and my visit just concentrated my addiction!!

Been thinking about this set for a long time and here it is at last!!

There are loads of images in this Christmas set, two nutcracker style figures, Christmas trees, tag designs and accompanying bits and bobs! Can't wait to show you...in fact I might just spend all week on this one set!!!


I went for a St Nicholas figure, rather than a generic Santa for this one for lots of reasons, partly because historical stories about the Saint fascinate me, partly because I love the whole tradition of Christmas, the idea that the Saint was the model for Santa, I find it all very fitting! lol!

I went for strong colours with this, I love rich deep colours! I coloured with copics, trimed the image out and mounted him on a textured background. I cut a circle out of the background to emulate those old icon paintings where you see a halo painted around the heads of saints and religious folks. It is so much easier to colour if you clear emboss your black stamped lines!

The wee pinked circle frame was made with my Spellbinders pinked circle dies.


I used a fine detailed font for my sentiments in this set, in the pic above you can see that it looks fabby stamped with Versafine black ink, this is a fabby ink to use for highly detailed stamps. With a 'looser' ink on a more porous paper the font looks more relaxed, you can see what I mean if you scroll down to the last pic, the 'God Jul' sentiment is slightly softer on the more absorbant paper.

Which brings me to the point where I mention that this sentiment contains several sentiment stamps, 16 in all that may be used alone or combined with others. Three of the sentiments are in other languages!!

We have:
God Jul - which I believe translates as Merry Christmas in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian
Zalig Kerstfeest - Merry Christmas in Dutch
Fröhliche Weihnachten - which I believe is the formal version of Merry Christmas in German

It just didn't seem right not to have these options in a set so obviously European in inspiration!!! And now you can send your Christmas greetings out in 6 languages! what fun!



OOh and did I mention music??? We got music stamps coming!! yep, we can print our own sheet music at a scale to suit our cards!! In fact there are several sizes of music stamps, including weeny music!! can you see it stamped in red on the panel just behind the Nutcracker Prince! You likey?


Right that's it for now, I'll be posting again tomorrow hopefully, gotta go pamper myself for an hour or so, I feel a cold coming on...LOL! It must be autumn or something!