Winter's Coming!

Winter's on the way! Here's a matchbook card utilizing stamps from 4 different Stampin' Up! stamp sets. The trees come from the always adaptable Lovely as a Tree set, along with the cute reindeer from the new Fall-Winter Mini Catalog's Winter Post set. The snowflakes are from the very popular, but now retired Snow Flurries, and the Christmas sentiment is one of four different stamps found in the Curly Label punch bundle. I love mixing different stamp images from Stampin'Up!s sets because so many of them compliment each other in ways that you least expect at times...

Matchbook cards are perfect to use for gift card holders. Cut your 8 1/2 x 11 inch cardstock in half lengthwise to make (2) pieces 4 1/4 x 11 inches. I did this using Pumpkin Pie. Measuring from one 4 1/4 inch side only, score at 1 inch and fold, and from that score line, measure and score at 5 3/8 inches and fold. This gives about a 1/4 inch overlap that will tuck behind the 1 inch pocket flap that was first created. For decorating, I heat-embossed my little Old Olive snowflake panel at the bottom with Versamark and white embossing powder, then glued it to the 1 inch flap. I folded the flap over and added brads to secure my pocket to hold my gift card. For my main image, I stamped the trees in black ink on a block of Whisper White. I used a torn post-it note along the ground to protect it when I sponged the sky in Really Rust, So Saffron and Pumpkin Pie inks. Then using a different post-it note, I covered the sky and sponged the ground in Old Olive ink. The reindeer was stamped on top in black ink using the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig so it would be placed exactly where I wanted it. I stamped/heat-embossed the snowflakes on the top of the panel with Versamark/white embossing powder. Lastly, I took my Versamark pen and drew in the snow and heat-embossed this with white embossing powder (went alittle crazy on this step, but I still like the effect - LOL!). This panel was mounted on Old Olive and a ribbon bow was tied across. After gluing the main panel down to my matchbook, I added the sentiment by stamping in Versamark and heat-embossing in black powder on Pumpkin Pie cardstock. This was punched out with the Curly Label punch, and I glued the lower half of the sentiment only onto the pocket flap.

Thank you for checking in with me today. I hope you like my gift card holder and get a chance to play with matchbook cards and heat embossing soon! I'm posting a different type of gift card holder tomorrow using the Top Note Die/Big Shot, Lovely as a Tree and this wonderfully fun Winter Post set - it has officially become a favorite one for me (ya, ya, ya... along with about 150 other "favorites" - hey, what can I say? SU! stamps ROCK!) :)