Friday, November 15, 2013

Christmas Luminary

Christmas Luminary

For my posting today, I chose to make a Christmas luminary.  I did not provide dimensions just some general guidelines as you can easily size this up or down to your liking.
Oct18AMV2
Signature

Supplies you will need:
Poppystamps Winterflake Frame [905]
Poppystamps Small Blooming Poinsettia [902]
Cardstock
Adhesives
Flameless battery-powered tea light
Embellishments
This is relatively easy to reproduce and customize.  For my luminary I began with an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of cardstock.  There are a couple of key considerations here.  Do you want a bottom of the luminary or just one that will sit over a battery-powered flameless candle?
For the luminary, determine your desired dimensions.  You will want two wide sides and two narrow sides (to mimic a paper bag).  Score where you wish them to fold but on the last side make sure you have a little extra that you can score and use to adhere the sides together.
My luminary is about 7" tall and my front and back panels are about 3" wide with my side panels a little over 2" inches wide (plus a little extra to adhere on the last panel).  I cut two sheets of vellum the size of my wide panels.  Then I cut ovals into my wide panels. I used glue dots to adhere the vellum to the inside of the luminary before assembling.
Next, I cut out the Small Blooming Poinsettia [902]  and the Winterflake Frame [905] dies from Poppystamps.  I trimmed the Winterflake Frame [905] by cutting out the middle section of the frame and formed the ends around my ovals.  Next I assembled several layers of the Small Blooming Poinsettia [902] and adhered to the vellum with a couple of glue dots.  
You can choose to repeat design on the back panel of the luminary, forgo the back panel (and not cut it out so it is solid) or use a different design.  You can also simply cut shapes such as the Giovanni Snowflake and let the light shine through.
I used miniature tea battery-powered tealights (never use an open flame) to create the flickering light inside which are found at most craft stores.  You can get as fancy as you'd like with ribbon, glitter or other embellisments as well.
Oct18AMV1
Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!  
Kimberly WM copy
You can find all the great Poppystamps dies used to create this luminary (and many other projects) by following the links below:

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

The Joy of Gifting - with simple gift card holders

The Joy of Giving

The Joy of Gifting 

Leaves final
This is an extremely simple card that can be mass produced if you have several people that are receiving gift cards or a single person who is one of those no-frills people that still like a little holiday joy (like my Dad).
JoyGiftCard
Signature
I used a gold metallic paper, a gold vellum to line the inside of the card, some string to string the banner and Poppystamps digital dies.

JoyInside
The inside of the card shows the digital die cutting for the gift card.  A wee bit of the top of the card is showing in the photo which is the gold vellum that lines the front panel.  You can be as ornate or as simple as you like and you can determine how big (or small) you wish to make a gift card holder so why pay $3 and $4 at the stores for one?  
Supplies:
147 - Scalloped Border Poppystamps digital die
173 - Scalloped Notches Poppystamps digital die
170 - Retro Border Poppy stamps digital die
Die cutting machine (I used Silhouette Portrait)
Card stock
Glue (or your preferred adhesive)
String

Poppystamps digital dies are fantastic as you can add your own text (like I did to the banners) and you can resize to fit your card, select all or a portion of the image, repeat the image without worrying about the metal die slipping and mass produce cards.  Now, I am NOT giving up my metal dies but it is nice to have options.  Plus, you can combine both digital and metal dies and pick a technique to customize your cards!
Each image file comes formatted as .ai, .dfx. jpg., pdf., png, and .svg to work with just about every electronic cutter.  You can see all the images available here.


If you have a digital cutter you will want to watch the blog this week.  Poppystamps will be featuring  digital dies for the next few days and choosing two random commenters to receive 10 free digi dies of their choice.   All you have to do is leave a comment by 11-18 on any of the posts (November 11-14) featuring the digi cuts.  Winners will be posted by Jeanne on the Poppystamps blog on 11-20.

Thanks for checking out my gift card holder and don't forget to to go to the Poppystamps blog to leave a comment!! Comments are welcomed here but do not count for the give-away, as those comments must be left on the Poppystamps blog.
Kimberly WM copy