Hello crafty people! Today’s cards were created to try to finish up my holiday cards. So I turned to my gel press, some sprays and some dies to make three quick cards.
One of the best things about these cards (other than I think they are super fun) is that they were a great excuse to pull out some dies in my stash that I hadn’t used in a while. Plus I got a chance to use some scraps of paper for a total paper crafting win!
READ ALSO: EASY DIY CHRISTMAS CARDS USING FLORAL DIE CUTS
Card 1
This was the first card I created out of the three shared here. It started with the intention to make a non-traditional colored holiday card, so I sprayed the background with purple and metallic sprays on watercolor paper. After the sprays dried, I die cut the panel with a stitched-rectangular die. I then ink blended the edges with a dark purple ink.
Then I used two snowflake dies in my stash–one a miniature version of the other–to die cut a piece of rose gold, glittery rose gold and shiny white cardstock with the dies. I then glued them onto the panel and trimmed the edges of the two larger dies so that they don’t overhang the panel.
The matte layer was die cut with the slightly larger die in the same die cut set the stitched-rectangular die did, this die cut another piece of the glittery rose gold cardstock used to die cut the snowflake on the lower left corner of the top layer. This panel was glued behind the main panel. At this point, I realized that I had added a smudge of dark purple ink that had snuck onto my finger. So I mixed more of the same purple ink with some water and watercolored the white shiny paper so mask the smudge.
I then die cut the sentiment with the same shiny white cardstock and glued it onto the shadow die cut out of vellum with the shadow dies from the same set. The whole thing was glued onto the bottom third of the card panel. Purple sequins in my stash were glued onto the card panel. The whole thing was glued onto a piece of A2-sized white card base. To finish, I decide to splatter more of the dark purple ink mixed with water across the card for just a little bit of extra interest.
Card 2
This card was made in a similar way as the first, with some different colors. To be honest, this was my favorite of these three cards. The panel was sprayed with dark pink, purple and metallic sprays. the card features a light blue, dark blue and white shiny cardstock. White and dark blue sequins are all on the card. The matte layer was die cut with the dark blue metallic cardstock.
Card 3
This card features the same dies as before, this time used as both stencils on a gel press print as well as the metallic cardstock die cuts on the card.
This time I used a gel press print that I had used the same snowflake dies as stencils. I then die cut some more of the snowflakes with more of the light blue and dark blue metallic cardstock. After die cutting the gel press print with the same stitched-rectangular die, I glued the snowflakes over where they were used as stencils on the gel press print, off set just a little so that you can see the white of the stencils. I then trimmed the metallic snowflakes, and splattered the whole panel with gold watercolor in my stash. The sentiment and matte layer were die cut out of more of the rose gold glitter cardstock used for the first card.
I hope that these cards inspire you to try something similar to get those last-minute cards done!
Anna York is from Oregon, US. She has been writing for TPC since 2023. Anna started paper crafting in 2008, had a break while her kids were small and started cardmaking again in 2019. Anna mostly makes cards. Her paper projects are often made in sparkly, whimsical style and she loves colors.