...Mrs Claus

Good morning!

How are you all?? Me? I'm packing and shipping, the release was big, and I mean BIG. Just in case you didn't know we released 6 new sets here on Saturday and Good Grief, Nordic Winter...wow...I cannot wait to see what you guys all get up to with that set!!!! - And we'll be giving you the opportunity to show it off very soon....

Meantime, here's a wee card I didn't get to put up during the release, hoping to get a few of my samples up on the blog this week while I'm otherwise engaged with stuffing envelopes!

I used the silhouette of Mrs Claus herself from Candy Jar Christmas. It's no secret that Christmas is my favourite Season, I love everything about it and everything it stands for. Admittedly with young kids in the house there's a lot of secular stuff going on and I'm more than happy to indulge in the frills and trimmings while they are all wee, but we try not to lose sight of the Baby in the manger and I love Christmas as much for the opprtunity for reflection that it seems to bring as anything else.

One of my favourite WMS events last year was a  'Nice List' event, where we asked folks to leave a comment to tell us about somebody who had been extra nice to them, or who had helped them in some way, somebody that should be on Santa's Nice List. Reading the answers made a big impression on me and I'm keen to do that again this year. We'll run that event at the beginning of November.

We'll also be running a tag competition again this year, also in November so be sure to get your thinking caps on, it won't be long!

Back to the card,  I used the Nordic Winter set to make a cosy knitted style background, see below, and I embossed some fine rock salt into some white card and then sponged all over with Victorian Velvet distress ink to get that front panel, I thought it added a nice snowy feel... It's trimmed out with a Postage stamp die. The circular sentiment is from the same Candy Jar Christma set and was trimmed out with a circle die, but they also work with 1.5 inch circular punches. Mrs Claus herself was stamped with a distress ink, love the texture you get with distress inks. If you prefer a more even coverage, I can recommend Versacolour inks, fab detail, smooth even coverage. 

Just a wee note about embossing random stuff on your machine - many thin things such as pieces of string and crystals of salt can be run successfully through an embossing machine, but be sure to try a little test grain, or tiny bit first, and go gingerly, as you never quite know what the machine is capable of handling and it is possible to break a machine of any kind by trying to emboss something which is too thick.

for more on the salt embossing see this post.

Hope it tickles.