Mix & Match Cardmaking Ideas with Say It With Style

A great sentiment can be the perfect finishing touch to a handmade card, and the Say It With Style Collection is full of messages you'll reach for again and again! From birthdays and celebrations to friendship and everyday encouragement, these versatile sentiments are designed to mix, match, and work beautifully with products you already have in your crafty stash.

Today, we're sharing two cards created by the talented Carissa Wiley during a recent LIVE cardmaking class. Carissa combines the new Say It With Style Collection with favorites from our previous You're a Classic, Tranquil Garden, and Yule Fuel Collections to create two stunning cards. Along the way, she shares plenty of tips for hot foiling, stamping, ink blending, and adding those little details that make a card extra special!

Missed the LIVE? Catch the replay and craft along with Carissa as she walks through both cards from start to finish. You'll see how easy it is to mix and match sentiments, combine new and older products, and get even more creative mileage out of your favorite supplies.

SUPPLIES

• Sentiment Strips XL - Everyday Letterpress + Foil

• Sentiment Strips XL Die

• Say It Inside & Out Stamp & Cut

• Birthdays Inside & Out Stamp & Cut 

• You're A Classic Stamp & Cut

• Squiggly Rectangle Frames Die Set

• Lotus Flower Die Set

• Lotus Field Letterpress + Foil Plate

• Celebration Letterpress + Foil Plate

• Hero Arts Core Inks: Arctic, Paradise, Cotton Candy, Butter Bar, Papaya, Kiwi

• Intensified Black Ink

• Seaside, Rainforest, Bellini, Chiffon, Waterfall, Pitch Black, and White Cardstock

• Gold Metallic Cardstock

• Precision Glue

• Champagne Hot Foil

• Glimmer Hot Foil System

• BetterPress Letterpress System

• Die Cutting Machine

• Blending Brushes

• Foam Adhesive

• Paper Trimmer

For her first card, Carissa creates a cheerful birthday design featuring an adorable balloon dog from the You're a Classic Collection paired with a gold foiled sentiment from the new Say It With Style Collection. Soft pastel colors, playful details, and a little shine make this card perfect for celebrating someone special!

Carissa begins by hot foiling the Sentiment Strips XL - Everyday Letterpress + Foil onto several colors of cardstock using Champagne Foil. One of the best features of this plate is that it creates 11 sentiments at once! The coordinating die cuts them all out in one pass, leaving you with a collection of ready-to-use messages for future projects.

CARISSA'S TIP: When die cutting multiple sentiment strips at once, secure the die with low-tack tape and run it through your machine with the short end leading. This helps keep the sentiments properly aligned as they pass through the rollers. Just be sure to keep your tape away from the foiled areas so it doesn't lift the foil.

For the background, Carissa uses a Celebration Letterpress + Foil Plate to add scattered Champagne Foil dots to white cardstock. She then stamps the balloon dog and balloons from the You're a Classic Stamp & Cut with black ink, filling in the images with a rainbow of soft Hero Arts Core Ink colors.

She even demonstrates the classic rock-and-roll stamping technique, adding a darker ink around the edges of the balloon dog stamp for subtle shading and dimension.

To bring the design together, Carissa adds a softly ink-blended area using Arctic Core Ink and layers a Seaside cardstock frame cut with the Squiggly Rectangle Frames Die Set. This simple frame helps draw attention to the smaller stamped images while adding a fun, playful border.

A gold foiled "Happy Birthday" strip stretches across the card, while a stamped and die cut "enjoy it" sentiment from the Birthday Inside & Out Stamp & Cut set adds a contrasting handwritten touch.

The final card is layered onto a thin black mat and a Seaside card base. Carissa shares a helpful design tip here, too: repeating a bold accent color in three places helps create balance. The black stamped outlines, cardstock mat, and smaller sentiment work together to make the contrast feel intentional.

We love how this card combines several techniques without feeling overly complicated! You could easily switch up the ink colors to match the recipient's favorites or recreate the design for another celebration.

For her second card, Carissa takes a completely different approach, creating a soft and elegant friendship card using the Lotus Flower Die Set and coordinating Lotus Field Letterpress + Foil Plate from our Tranquil Garden Collection.

This design is a beautiful example of how a few carefully chosen elements can make a big impact!

Carissa begins by die cutting the layered lotus flower from soft pink cardstocks. She adds gentle ink blending to the individual pieces before assembling them, creating subtle variations in color that bring the petals to life. The greenery is cut from Rainforest cardstock and blended with Kiwi Core Ink for added depth.

Next comes one of our favorite details: the tone-on-tone textured background!

Using the Lotus background press plate without ink, Carissa creates a delicate debossed impression on white BetterPress cardstock. The result is a beautiful, understated floral texture that adds interest without competing with the focal point.

CARISSA'S TIP: For a deeper letterpress impression, try adjusting the pressure with an appropriate shim for your machine. She also recommends trimming your finished panel with a paper trimmer rather than a rectangle die, which could flatten some of that beautiful texture.

To finish the card, Carissa pairs two gold foiled sentiment strips from the Say It With Style Letterpress + Foil Plate: "Hello Friend" and "You Make Me Smile." The two messages work perfectly together, creating a longer sentiment with a mix of bold and delicate lettering.

She aligns the strips side by side and secures them together with foam adhesive on the back before attaching them to the card. It's a clever little trick that makes positioning multiple sentiment strips so much easier!

The layered lotus flower and greenery are tucked around the sentiments, while a thin gold cardstock mat adds just the right amount of shine. The finished card is clean, elegant, and full of beautiful details.

And the thoughtful messages don't stop on the outside! Carissa stamps "Best Friends Are Soulmates, Too" from the Say It With Style Inside & Out Stamp & Cut set inside the card, creating a sweet surprise for the recipient.

What makes these two cards so inspiring is how differently Carissa uses the same collection. One card is playful and colorful, while the other is soft and sophisticated. Yet both feature gold foiled sentiment strips paired with coordinating stamped messages!

The Say It With Style Collection includes three versatile sets that make mixing and matching easy:

• Say It With Style Letterpress + Foil Plate: Create 11 beautiful sentiments at once with hot foiling or letterpress techniques. The coordinating die cuts all 11 strips in one pass.

• Say It Inside & Out Stamp & Cut: A collection of thoughtful everyday messages designed to work together on the inside and outside of your handmade cards.

• Birthdays Inside & Out Stamp & Cut: Fun, playful birthday greetings that can be combined to create personalized messages for everyone on your birthday card list.

These are the kinds of staple sentiment sets that earn a permanent spot in your craft room! Keep a stash of pre-foiled sentiment strips in different colors, mix them with your favorite stamped images, or pair them with floral die cuts and textured backgrounds.

You can even use the sentiment strip die on its own to create colorful cardstock strips for backgrounds and other decorative details.

Whether you're making birthday cards, friendship cards, thank-you notes, or just-because greetings, there are so many possibilities to explore!

We hope these two cards inspire you to pull out some of your favorite supplies and give them a fresh look with new sentiments! Sometimes all it takes is a different greeting, a new color combination, or a little added texture to make a familiar product feel brand new.

A big thank you to Carissa for sharing these beautiful projects and so many helpful cardmaking tips! Be sure to watch the full replay for even more inspiration, and explore the Say It With Style Collection to find your new favorite sentiments.

Happy crafting!