Sparkle and Shine Christmas Tree Card

 

This card is full of sparkle and texture with shimmer, glitter and foil cardstocks, Stickles and gold metallic heat embossing for the sentiment.  I love sparkly things at any time of year and for Christmas it seems like you can never have too much sparkle and shine!

The Christmas tree I chose is from the Anna Griffin Winter Wonderland Cricut cartridge.  I made it slightly wider than the original sizing to fill the front of the card.

I wanted to use more traditional colors so I changed the tree to green, the garlands and candles to red and the base and star to gold.  I also eliminated the background layer so the open design of the branches would be featured.

Here you can see the image as it appears from the cartridge on the left and my altered version on the right.  I used the iPad app for the Cricut Explore (I am one of the people previewing the app which is expected to be available in January).  It was very quick and easy to make these changes and I love the convenience of using the iPad with the wireless adapter instead of carrying my laptop up and down the stairs.

Here is the assembled tree.  I cut the base, star and tree from Core'dinations Core Couture glitter cardstock.  The candles and garland are cut from American Crafts foil cardstock.  You may notice that my candles have green "flames" since they are part of the base tree cut.

I added yellow Stickles glitter glue to each candle flame.  After letting it dry, I thought that one coat was not completely covering the green so I put on a second layer of yellow for the final card.

Here are all of the pieces for the card.  The card base is a gold shimmer A2 card from the David Tutera collection.

These card and envelope sets were recently on clearance at Consumer Crafts and I stocked up on them.  I like the lovely gold shimmer and the cards are white inside which saves the step of adding a liner to the card for your message.

I found the perfect sentiment on this stamp set from Close to My Heart called "Yuletide Greetings."  The number for this set is D1553 and you can find it on my friend Joy Tracey's CTMH site HERE.  There are lots of lovely images in this set that can be hand colored - or stamped in a single color if you prefer.

I made the sentiment strip 3 3/4 inches x 3/4 of an inch and attached it at the very bottom of the embossed white layer.

The white layer is embossed with this "Snowfall" Anna Griffin Cuttlebug embossing folder.  I got this as part of the Autoship package when I purchased Anna Griffin Dies and Folders earlier this year.  The folder is part of the Christmas Folders and Dies set which is available individually on the HSN site HERE.

The white layer is cut at 3 3/4 x 5 inches and the dark green layer below is cut at 4 x 5 1/4 inches.  When embossing the white layer I was careful to center the design on the piece of cardstock.  This card just needs to be symmetrical!

The stamped sentiment has very thin and small letters but I was able to emboss it.  After I finished I remembered that I have some fine detail embossing powder and I might try that the next time I emboss with this stamp.

Here are the yellow Stickles and Zing gold metallic embossing powder that I used for this card.  I store my Stickles bottles upside down so they are always ready to apply and the tip does not dry out (that's why the contents are all at the top of the bottle).

I like the effect of the dark border with the sentiment at the bottom of the layered card.  In this case, it created a sort of "floor" for the tree to stand on.

The tree is very thin so I used 1/8 inch ScorTape on the trunk of the tree and some liquid adhesive on the branches and tips of the tree.

Here is a closer view of the candles after the second layer of Stickles was dry.

I was very pleased with the clean cut through the glitter cardstock - The images were perfect on the first try.

 

There are so many lovely and elegant images on the Anna Griffin Winter Wonderland cartridge - it is definitely one of my favorites.  Click HERE to see more about the cartridge (affiliate links).

I used a couple of the images to make this banner panel last year - you can read about the project HERE.  This cartridge is not included in the Image Library Subscription so you might want to think about adding it to your collection! 

The weather hasn't been very nice so far this weekend - it was cold and rainy here today.  We are getting a lot of projects done around the house, including some painting that we want to finish before everyone arrives home for the holidays.  I hope it all gets done!  Do you start big projects on short deadlines?  I should know better!

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