The Coffee Oasis Blog Hop

BLOG HOP PAGE STARTS HERE: http://katscrappinessblog.com/charity-blog-hop/

Hello, crafters!  Cynthia here with a very special blog, dedicated to raising money for an extremely worthy cause.  It's easy to overlook the daily blessings we all have, and take those blessings for granted.  Now is our chance to spread some of the love to our greatest resource:  our children!  They are all, indeed, our future.  Please consider making a donation to The Coffee Oasis, as well as joining this hop with your own blog post.  There are lots of opportunities to win a wonderful prize, and your participation will also spread awareness about this amazing charity.

My winter-themed card features several Kat Scrappiness products, both new and old.  I used the brand new Stitched Winter Swirl Backdrop Die, the "Snowflake Kisses" Brush Script Word Die, and the new Dark Blue Jewels.  Let's take an in-depth look at the steps used to make this card.

My first step was cutting the backdrop die.  I decided on this pretty dark blue card stock, which I thought would be a striking contrast for the white details I will be adding.  This intricately patterned die is extremely easy to cut out, as the pattern is made of only tiny stitched lines - no fussing with tiny pieces!  Thank you, Kat Scrappiness! 

To accentuate all of the lovely details, I used my white gel pen to outline/fill in the pattern over the entire panel.  This is fairly easy to do, and only takes a bit of patience.  To add just the right touch of bling, I used the Dark Blue Jewels to outline the swirls at the top right and bottom left of the panel.  I knew that I would be adding my word die to the center of the panel, but depending on your own design you could add more jewels to yours.

I then used the adorable "Snowflake Kisses" Die to cut my sentiment out of white card stock.  I decided to do one of my favorite design tricks:  layering dies to create dimension.  Instead of trying to add tiny pieces of foam tape to the backside of the lettering, I simply cut out three word dies and glued them together.  This gave me a sentiment that was much thicker, almost like a chipboard piece. You could add even more layers to make your own dies as thick as you'd like them 😊 

When I first laid my sentiment directly on the snowflake panel, the background actually made the words a little harder to read than I liked.  To solve this I cut a rectangular piece of vellum that was large enough to surround the die, then added a narrow rectangular frame in white.  I was very careful to use tiny dots of paste adhesive to add the pieces to the vellum - you don't want to get any glue smears on it, trust me!

This is how the sentiment turned out.  You can still see the design of the background, but it's been muted by the vellum to let the words stand out.  The rectangular frame also focuses your attention to the words.  You can also see that by layering my dies there is a shadow beneath them, again helping to draw your attention to them.  I know it's hard to describe, but all of these subtle little things really do help your card to be the best it can be.  Trust me, I'm a Design Team Member 😄

And that completes my card project!  I hope that you enjoyed following along with me, and that I managed to explain my steps.  Please be sure to head over to the Kat Scrappiness shop and grab these items for yourself - I've included a shopping link for you down below.  By shopping with a small, independent business owner you are helping to support a hard-working woman with a deep passion for crafting and creation, and your business is greatly appreciated.  Please also be sure to use my coupon code "CYNTHIA10" to receive 10% off your entire purchase, including the new releases.  Take care of yourselves, and I will be back later in the month with more crafty goodness 💖

Kat Scrappiness website

The Coffee Oasis donations

My YouTube channel