Hope, Joy and Love

Food, glorious food!!  It's such an important part of our holiday celebrations.  This week at Card A Day Blog our theme has been Christmas and Food.  I had visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, but I didn't have everything I needed to make them dance on my card.  Sooooo, I decided on candy canes instead.  Such an iconic image of the Christmas season, don't you think?


Of course, I couldn't just lay a couple of candy cane images on a card base, and call it a day.  I wanted to come up with an idea that would be a little more fun and inspiring for you.  I was reading something recently that referred to 'split negatives' using stamping.  I hadn't seen that in awhile, and thought it sounded promising for my card.  For anyone not familiar with that technique; an image is stamped twice, once on dark paper and once on light.  The image on dark paper is then heat embossed in white, while the image on light or white paper is heat embossed in black.  Both images are cut exactly in half, and then half of one is matched with the opposing half of the other.  It's a great effect!  And you can certainly use other sharply contrasting colors if you don't want the stark black and white.


Okay, well, I didn't have a candy cane stamp that I could use that way, but I do have a Cricut machine.  So I did a little search on my Gypsy, and here is what I came up with:

I first cut the main candy cane images and their shadows in the two traditional colors, red and white, and played around with different ways of layering them on various papers (read; scraps  lol).  During the process I came upon a white scrap that I had run through my crimper.  I really liked the texture, so I decided to leave out the shadow cuts, use the crimped piece as one background, and create a second textured background using an embossing folder and my Cuttlebug.  Once I was happy with that I was able to choose the mat and base card papers. 

As I was looking at the basic design and trying to decide on my sentiments, I determined that my candy canes were looking a little flat, so I added some glittered embossing powder.  It was just the effect I was looking for.

In getting ready to assemble my card, my first impulse was to set the candy canes back-to-back, as you see them in the above photo, which looked just fine.  But then the idea of turning them into a heart just jumped out at me.  Christmas is the season of love, after all!  Then, using the heart also gave me the idea for my sentiments which I created myself and printed.

I dressed up the inside of the card a bit with some of the same design paper as the front mat , and used the image shadows to bring the candy cane heart idea to the inside as well.

For the final touches, I applied the sentiments and candy canes to the front with foam tape for just a little more dimension, and added dashed lines on the mat and card base.  I think the white 'stitching' created a nice framed effect.  So, here is the finished card!

I hope I've given you some good ideas today.  Let me know if you have any questions, and I always appreciate your comments!

     Supply Deets:
          Papers:  Papertrey Ink Pure Poppy, Ripe Avocado card base (A2 size - 5 1/2 x 4 1/4) and Rustic Snowflakes design paper stack for mat; Wassau white
          Cricut Cartridge:  Very Merry Tags
          Embossing Folder:  Sizzix Peppermint Twists
          Embossing Powder:  Stampendous Red Tinsel, JudiKins Opaque White
          Glitter Glue:  Stickles Frosted Lace
          Other:  Versamark Watermark Stamp Pad, Cuttlebug, Inkssentials White Opaque Pen and Matte Accents, Fiskars Paper Crimper, tape runner


See you again soon, and always keep your creative genius flowing.........

CHRISTINE