Double the Impact with Creative Die Combinations

Hi crafty friends! Rosie here and I am at that point in my holiday card making where I am combining products more creatively. I feel like I usually start off using products in a pretty obvious way and then I start pushing limits and thinking outside of the box. That is what I did for my card today. I combined the October Die Set of the Month with the The Whole Studio Bonus Die to make one focal point element. This project was a labor of love but this is the only focal point on the project so I felt like it was worth the extra time.

I used Shamrock Cardstock to die cut the strings of lights and the detail layer of the sentiment die. The shamrock detail sentiment is stacked twice because it is so delicate. At first, I used the string of lights and adhered it to the back of the sentiment but I quickly realized it was too many lights and distracted from the sentiment. So, I trimmed each light off the string leaving a little “cord” on each end of the bulb so it had something to adhere to. I placed the lights to the back side of the sentiment. My Reverse Grip Tweezers definitely came in handy for this process. 

I stacked the white shadow layer from White Cardstock three times and adhered the detail sentiment to the white shadow. I made sure to pull the light bulbs up to the front. At this point I knew I still had too many lights and I couldn’t read the sentiment very well so I gave it a bit of a haircut and trimmed off a few more lights.

Now it’s time to add some color. I die cut the bulbs from a rainbow of colored cardstock. I used Spellbinders cardstock in Dahlia, Pomegranate, Carrot, Beeswax, Rainforest, Waterfall, Lilac plus Hero Arts Peacock. I went in a somewhat rainbow order adding the colored bulbs to the pine colored base.

After that, I added clear glossy accents and sprinkled with a super fine Prisma Glitter.
I let this dry completely and popped it up before adding to a Pitch Black card base. I considered adding it to a patterned background but in the end, I wanted to keep the clean and simple look. 

Thank you for checking out my post today. I hope this encourages and inspires you to combine your products in a new way. Stretch the limits and you might be surprised with the results.