Making Spirits Bright!

Christmas lights have always been so magical and mesmerizing to me since I was a small child. I could gaze at them for hours. I love them all, pure white, all blue, multicolor, big bulbs, little bulbs, you name it! One of my first purchases when I moved away to college was tiny little “S” (for Michigan State) string of lights that I hung in my dorm room. So of course, the first thing I ordered from the new Stampin’ Up! holiday catalog was the “Making Christmas Bright” stamp set with the bulb builder punch. The stamp set has little light bulbs you can punch out, as well as some images of strings of lights, ring of lights, hanging star lights, and some nice verses. I am embarrassed to say this was my first time playing with a few of the new colors! I used Pineapple Punch, Gorgeous Grape, Poppy Parade, Call me Clover. On the light bulbs, I did dip them in versa mark after stamping and punching them out, and stuck clear sparkling embossing powder. It was magical seeing the sparkling light bulbs emerge after applying heat to the powder!!! I am not going to lie, I stared at those light bulbs a bit. I added versa mark to the Sparkle embossing folder, then placed the small piece of Call me Clover on the versa marked side, and ran my brayer over it to transfer the versa mark images to the paper. I did use the raised side of the folder. This was technique I learned about in our Karin’s Crafting Crew team meeting this month.

My card today was inspired by these 3 different challenges.  Karin’s Crafting Crew Downline team challenge was to use an embossing folder in a unique way. Every week I gaze at the new sketches at Freshly Made Sketches, and I usually have such a hard time with sketch challenges. But this week, I just clicked with Freshly Made Sketches #352. Color Throwdown #508 Purple, Green, Yellow, and Red challenge really made me dig deep, since I knew I wanted to make a holiday card. Purple is not a holiday color for me, but after this challenge, it is! I love this color combination.