Why not celebrate one of the prettiest winter themes

It’s the winter holiday season! But, at a time of the year when most people are involved in gift-giving, the one type of card I don’t seem to see enough of isa thank you card. So this year, besides taking lots of time to make holiday cards and gifts for friends and family, why not plan to take the time to make thank you cards so you'll be prepared to send them out to all of those who have done something nice during the holidays.

Something I try to do when making thank you cards for the winter holidays is to use more of a winter theme than a holiday theme. Winter is all around, so why not celebrate one of the prettiest winter themes – snow!

Stampin’ Up! has made it easy for us to create cards with a snow theme this year with their Joyful Flurry Bundle, including the Joyful Flurry Stamp Set and the Frosted Flurry Dies. Add in the Snowflake folder in the Wintry 3D Embossing Folder set, and you can almost feel the snowflakes in today’s card.

Have you ever inked up the inside of an embossing folder before running it with cardstock through your Stampin’ Cut & Emboss Machine? It is so much fun, and clean-up is a lot easier than you might think. For the center strip in this card, tap your Starry Night Ink Pad all over one side of the inside of the embossing folder. That one side is the side that has the Stampin’ Up! logo on the outside. When you ink up that side, you’ll see that the indentations in the design don’t pick up most of the ink that you’ve tapped onto the surface.

The next step is to get your paper into the embossing folder without smearing any ink. The easiest way to do that is to place it against the side that’s not inked up and then press the inked side up to close the folder. No adjusting after that! Run the folder with cardstock through the machine. Then carefully open the folder and peel the cardstock away from the inked side.

To clean the folder, just run in under a faucet until there’s no more ink (it doesn’t take more than a few seconds), dry it and you’d never know you’d inked it up. A word of caution: Red colored inks may not be as forgiving as other colors. But even though they may leave a slight stain, there won’t be any ink left to get onto anything else that you use the folder for.

Here’s the sketch for this card. While the inked center strip is shown as 2-3/4” x 5-1/2”, the piece of Basic White Cardstock that I embossed was 3-1/4” x 6”. After it was all inked up, trim it down to the final size.

Supplies:

Joyful Flurry Bundle (Joyful Flurry Stamp Set and Frosted Flurry Dies)
Go To Greetings Stamp Set (Thank You stamp)
Starry Night Cardstock, 8-1/2” x 5-1/2”
Starry Night Classic Stampin’ Pad
Basic White Cardstock, 3” x 5-1/2”, 3-1/4” x 6”, 4” x 5-1/4”, large scrap for Stamping and Die-cutting
Rhinestone Basic Jewels
Stampin’ Dimensionals
Multipurpose Liquid Glue
Mini Stampin’ Cut & Emboss Machine

Directions

Fold card base to create a 4-1/4” wide x 5-1/2” high card base.
Using the Starry Night ink, ink up the inside of the Snowflake Wintry Embossing Folder. The side to be inked has the Stampin’ Up! logo on the outside.
Insert the 3-1/4” x 6” piece of White Cardstock into the folder and run it through the Mini Stampin’ Cut & Emboss Machine.
Trim the embossed paper to 2-3/4” wide x 5-1/2” high.
Using Multipurpose Glue, adhere the embossed layer to the 3” x 5-1/2” piece of White Cardstock. Then adhere this grouping to the card base, centering right to left.
Using Starry Night Ink, stamp “Thank You” onto the large scrap. Die-cut the sentiment with the larger frame from the Frosted Flurry Dies set.
Using Stampin’ Dimensionals, adhere the sentiment to the front of the card as shown.
Apply Rhinestone Basic Jewels to the center of the three largest embossed snowflakes.
Using Starry Night Ink, stamp a vertical line of small snowflakes from the Joyful Flurry Stamp Set along the right side of the 4” x 5-1/4” piece of White Cardstock.
Using Multipurpose Glue, adhere the stamped White Cardstock to the inside of the card as shown below.