Christmas in September?

Where did the summer go? Kids are back in school, with all the insanity that goes with it, vacations are a not-so-distant memory, and it is once again time to get busy with the important things in life...crafting for the holidays! Yay! All of September the Dream Team will be featuring all the new goodies we have for the "Most wonderful time of the year", the fall and winter holiday season. New stencil designs, new dies, and...(coming soon) brand new embossing folders featuring some of our top-selling designs, all to be found on-line through the Stencil with Style web-site, or your local papercrafting store.

 

Here's my holiday inspiration for this week:

I created it using metal and velvet paper, which means that it did not photograph as well as I would like to (the only thing about these two materials that I don't like), but perhaps a couple of closer shots and some more detailed explanation would be helpful.
For the flowers, I started by running green metal through my Cuttlebug with this sandwich:  A Plate, Stencil LL3046 Tall Poinsettia (face up), Green Coated Aluminum (face up), the Stamping Details Rubber Embossing Mat and two B Plates.  You might wonder why I have those little lines through the metal.  Well, true confession time, I was all out of the Mercart Metal, so I used a different brand in the same color.  If you use the metal that I linked, you won't have that problem.  Anyway, I then left the stencil under the metal as I gently pressed the metal against the inside of the stencil with the Teflon Tool in the Basic Metal Kit.  You can skip this step if you want to, it just won't have as crisp of edges.  Then, I used the Color Solutions Remover on a Q Tip to remove the green inside the flower and seeds.  I left just a little in the edges so that it would darken the tips.  I dropped a little Christmas Red Color Solutions inside the wells of the flowers and Lemoncello inside the seeds.  I did not worry too much about it going over the edges because I knew I would sand it later.  I enhanced the colors a little with Q Tips and Paprika Red in the flowers and Gourd Green in the leaves.  I then sanded the top and brushed of the dust with a stencil brush.  I pulled the metal off the stencil, and placed it on Double Stick Mounting Paper, burnishing it down with my fingers.

 

For the background, I repeated the embossing process I explained, except that I put Stencil LX 7027 Quatrefoil face down and the velvet paper face down on top of it.  Other than that, I used the same sandwich.  For the letters, I used the new Dual Alphabet Dies in my Cuttlebug with green metal.  The sandwich for this was A Plate, dies face up, metal face down, C Plate and B Plate.  If you have any trouble cutting all the way through the metal, a slight shim of cardstock should fix it. Then, I sanded just the outside of the letter and reassembled them on Double Stick Mounting Paper.
Finally, I assembled the card, using the other side of the Double Stick Paper to attach the metals.

 

Of course, we have our monthly challenge for you to play along, so post your own holiday creations, and use the Inlinkz tool on the Dream It Up! blog, for a chance to win the prize at the end of the month. We also have our fabulous Guest Designer for the month of September, Wendy Price! Here's the list of our "A" Team with their links for the week:

Dream It Up!

Wendy Price (GD)

Leadonna Kimmel

Louise Healy

Laura Drahozal

Lynn Mercurio

Pam Hornschu

Jamie Martin

An InLinkz Link-up

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