Quick Holiday Cards with Non-Traditional Colors (Feat. Timeless Sentiments: Holiday Edition)
Hi friends! Emily Midgett here with you today, and I have some inspiration to share with you using the brand new Timeless Sentiments: Holiday Edition to create quick holiday cards with a large die cut sentiment focal point.
This die set features a gorgeous, chunky font that is super trendy, and it also features some wonderful holiday sentiments that are perfect for creating a large-scale sentiment focal point to make your holiday cardmaking go more quickly. Creating simple backgrounds to enhance a large scale die cut sentiment is the easiest way to make a big impact on a holiday card. The Timeless Sentiments: Holiday Edition set features generously-sized sentiments worked beautifully to create these cards, and would make mass production super simple. Let's get started on the details for my projects!
Quick Holiday Cards with Non-Traditional Colors
For both of my quick holiday cards, I kept the color palette very bright and somewhat non-traditional, featuring the vibrant pink Puffy Heart cardstock paired with gorgeous Forest Fern cardstock.
Bright pink and vivid green always makes me think of the different candy costumes in the Nutcracker, and so I was channeling those unique colors from that most classic ballet for both of my projects today. Having the array of colored cardstock in Altenew's spectacular color palette is going to be a total game changer.
Tip: to create a cohesive card set, use the same color at least once on each of your cards. It can be an accent on one card and a focal point on another, but that cohesive color vein running through your card set will help keep things looking intentional!
I started my first project by hot foiling the beautifully detailed Deco Fan hot foil plate onto a panel of Forest Fern cardstock, trying to achieve an elegant tone-on-tone pattern by using Emerald Green foil. This pairing of the green cardstock and the shiny green hot foil definitely gives luxury wrapping paper vibes! After hot foiling, I trimmed down the A2 panel slightly and matted it in the center of an A2 panel of Puffy Heart cardstock, creating a vibrant pink frame around the edges of my “wrapping paper” panel. Tip: by changing up the color palette, you can easily make a neutral, non-holiday design into something very festive and appropriate for the holidays!
How to Make Your Sentiment the Star of the Show
To allow my large scale sentiment die cut to be the star of the show, I used some vibrant magenta mirror foil cardstock to die cut the detail layer of the “all is calm” greeting from Timeless Sentiments: Holiday Edition.
The contrast of the shiny, shocking pink foil from the patterned green background immediately draws the eye to the sentiment with minimal work, creating a quick focal point.
Behind the detail layer, I die cut a vellum shadow layer to add a thin frame, helping to further enhance the sentiment focal point. I continued the holiday theme by die cutting some foliage using the incredibly versatile Branches and Berries die set, cut using deep green matte cardstock and coordinating kelly green glitter cardstock from the Forest Canopy Glitter Gradient cardstock set.
I popped up the greeting with foam adhesive, then tucked the sprigs of greenery beneath the sentiment. Finally, I finished the card off with a shimmering pink twine bow and some Iridescent Adhesive Gems.
For my second card, I used the same beautiful Puffy Heart cardstock that I used as an accent on the first project, this time as the main element of the color palette.
I embossed an A2 panel of the Puffy Heart cardstock using the Poinsettia Cluster embossing folder, orienting the design to the right hand side of the panel. To help enhance the beautifully textured design from the Poinsettia Cluster embossing folder, I used blending brushes to blend Puffy Heart and Cosmic Berry Fresh Dye Ink from the Rose Petal Fresh Dye Ink quartet on the embossed corner of the cardstock.
Tip: I also used the metallic watercolors to help “gild” the edges of the petals, adding some glittering shimmer to the raised areas on the textured background and enhancing the centers of the flowers.
After finishing my relatively simple background, I die cut the large “peace & joy” greeting from the Timeless Sentiments: Holiday Edition from Cosmic Berry cardstock and backed it with a vellum shadow layer, creating contrast between the bright background and deep purple sentiment die cut. I adhered the die cut sentiment focal point with some foam adhesive directly on top of the embossed poinsettias.
To accent the sentiment even further and add some additional textural contrast, I die cut a few more of the images from the Branches and Berries die set using Puffy Heart cardstock and Pink Brilliance Glitter Cardstock, this time focusing only on the berry sprigs. I tucked the berries beneath the popped up sentiment die cut, maintaining the shape and flow of the poinsettia images in the background and added some Iridescent Adhesive Gems for a bit more sparkle.
Well, that's all for my quick holiday cards today!
All three sets from the Timeless Sentiments die line are marvelous for creating easy focal points for your quick holiday cards, thanks to their generous size and gorgeous typography. They're definitely a must-have, in my opinion, as they make such an impact with minimal work! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvleous day!
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