Cat Tales and Paper Trails: Concord & 9th Friday Feature: Christmas Florals

September is my favorite month for many reasons: school starts again, and our family falls back into a regular routine. the temperatures start to cool and the Minnesota fall colors appear. September is also my birthday month, and best of all, stamp company Christmas releases happen! (So I usually make full use of that birthday month excuse and order ALL the things.)

This September is even more special. I was thrilled and honored to invited to be a guest designer for Concord and 9th for their September Holiday Release!! I was absolutely thrilled to get an early chance to see and work with all of these amazing new Holiday products for Concord and 9th's Feature Fridays.

Today's Feature Friday post focuses on the Concord & 9th Christmas Florals Bundle. This Bundle is the holiday version, very similar to their very popular previously released Wonderful Florals Bundle. This set features Poinsettias, the large font Christmas, and a variety of mix and match coordinating words and sentiments.

It also has a matching die set, with dies to cut the whole large image, the letters alone, as well as various portions of the image, and a small sentiment frame for the add on sentiments.

I chose to stamp the large image in black ink and colored with Copic Markers. I colored very loosely, leaving lots of white areas for highlights, using several shades of reds and greens and blue-greens for variation and shading.

While my panel was drying, I created a background for my image. I stamped the Barnwood Background stamp onto a panel of white cardstock, with dark gray ink. Then using a blending brush, I brushed in kraft, and brick red ink to create a warm, rich wood grain color. When the ink was dry, I covered the whole wood grain panel with embossing ink (direct from the ink pad), then heat embossed the whole panel with clear, to create a highly varnished shine. This panel was the added to my A2 side fold cardbase.

I used the matching die to cut my painted image out and adhered it to my shiny woodgrain panel. I also cut the merry word die from both red and white cardstock and layered them slightly off-set to the upper left of my card.

I used the large image again, this time heat embossing the image onto hot press watercolor paper with gold. This allowed me to add color with Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers.

I lightly added color direct to paper with my markers in small areas, then pulled with color across and blended colors with an aquabrush. To create variation of color, I used colors from peach to corals to reds, trying to create dimension on each half of the petals and shading by using different tones.

This time, I used the large image die as well as the letter die to create the cut out letters from my colored panel. I built a shaker card, by flipping my colored and die cut panel face down, and adhering a small piece of clear window plastic behind the cut out letters of my panel. (My ATG gun is my prefered adhesive when making shaker cards.) . On top of my window plastic, I added a 3' x 4" frame of double layered adhesive foam tape, making sure that all sides of the frame fit tightly against each other and were tightly sealed, so none of my shaker pieces would be able to escape through any gaps. I then added a mix of sequins inside the frame, then sealed the sequins into shaker frame with a piece of red mirror foiled paper from the Holiday Foil Paper Pack. My shaker panel was now ready to be adhered to my card base. I decided to use the Barnwood Background again, this time though, I stamped in a medium gray ink onto a beige cardstock, and brushed in kraft ink to add a bit more variation of color to the wood panels.

I have one more quick card to share in this post. I love the very clean font of the letters in the Christmas word die that is included in this bundle, and I was curious if they would fit across the front of a horizontal A2 card. I cut them from red cardstock and lined them up carefully along one of the printed grid lines of my craft mat on my desk. With a bit of careful adjusting, I was able to make them fit within a 5 1/2" space. Since they were now all aligned and spaced, I wanted to save that arrangement to use on a cards. So I cut a piece of Post It tape (washi tape works too), about y6 1/2" long and taped it right on top of my aligned letters. This saves them all in a row, perfectly aligned. I was able to pick up the whole row together and set it aside to use when I was ready.

I stamped the Woven Stripes Background onto a white, top-fold A2 cardbase. Then added my row of letters that spelled out CHRISTMAS. I simply flipped the row of taped together letters, added liquid adhesive to the back of each letter, then glued the whole row to my card base at once. As soon as the glue was secure, I simple peeled off the tape!

I cut mistletoe die cuts from the Mistletoe and Holly Bundle, from a light and darker green, added a hint of highlight to some of the Mistletoe leaves with a white gel pen. I added them to my cards, along and a bright red die cut bow with liquid adhesive.

And also stamped the two small add on sentiment builder stamps from Christmas Floral onto the small strip die cuts. I layered these sentiment strips onto red double ended banner diecuts (also from Mistletoe and Holly Dies). The sentiment strip fits perfectly over this banner die! I added them left and right justified above and below my word Christmas and simply snipped off the outer flag ends.